One For Nana Addo And Dr Bawumia  

He did run against Mr J.J. Rawlings in 1996 and lost but he did not lose hope.  Rawlings was leading a quasi military regime and the soldiers were at his beck and call.  In fact, he had his own personal battalion called the 64 Battalion or Commandoes based at the Blue Gate.  These soldiers, who acted like German guard dogs, brooded no nonsense and Ghanaians lived in fear.  They were paid well and fed well and so they did not mind dying for their paymaster.  The NPP organised another primaries at Sunyani in 1998 and elected the same J.A. Kufuor to lead the party again.

In 1999, I decided to visit a colleague teacher at Sankore in the Brong-Ahafo Region to have a chat with him concerning a loan we had contracted with a shylock money lender who threatened to take the two of us to court if we failed to pay back the loan immediately school re-opened. Like what is happening today in God's own country, times were very hard and we normally relied on loans from shylock money lenders to survive the economic hardships.  Poor teachers, we had no choice but to go borrowing and go sorrowing.

When I reached Sankore and went to the house of my friend, I met his wife who told me that her husband had gone to the cocoa farm of his father to help him harvest cocoa.  Because I did not prepare to stay overnight, I begged the wife to let one of her sons lead me to the farm and she willingly agreed.  And so we started our journey through a bush path from Sankore to the said cocoa farm.  I do not know how the place looks like today but in those days, we did walk through many cocoa farms with hamlets located in every farm that we passed by and we greeted the inhabitants as we passed.

Along the way, we saw about six gentlemen dressed in khaki trousers with boots to march coming towards us. When we met face-to-face, I recognised one of the men as Mr J.A. Kufuor.  Mr Kufuor and his group stopped us and engaged us in a conversation.  It was Kufuor himself who first greeted us and asked where we were going and whether the next village we were coming from was far from where we stood.  I told him it was just a few kilometres away. As we decided to move on, he again asked us to stop and he asked us what we were doing in that area.  I told him I came to visit a colleague teacher at Sankore but was told he had gone to his father's cocoa farm so his son was taking me to the farm.

When Mr Kufuor realised that I was a teacher, he became excited and appealed to me to use my influence as a teacher to campaign for the NPP so that change could come for all of us to enjoy the good things in life.  For nearly twenty minutes, Mr Kufuor lectured us on the need for a change since Rawlings and his retinue were mismanaging the economy.  He promised us that when, by the grace of God, he held the reins of power he would bring changes that would benefit all, irrespective of political leanings.  I gave him my word to campaign for the NPP and we parted ways.  As I looked back to take a final glimpse of the man who would one day become the Executive President of Ghana, I saw a visibly tired man trudging along a cocoa farm. That was when I became a foot soldier of the NPP. I told myself that if a man who wanted to become the president of Ghana could risk his life to visit such remote areas and drink and eat with the poor folks there, then such a man had the people at heart.  I never looked back in my quest to campaign for Kufuor till the dream of the party he led   to power became a reality.  Candidate Kufuor traversed the land like Colossus, slept with the people in their villages and carried the message of hope in simple Twi which even tenant farmers from the Northern Region understood so well.  Because the message the man sent did sink in well, he won the 2000 elections despite the intimidation, bullying and naked rigging.  As fate would have it, I never had the opportunity to meet Mr Kufuor to remind him of our encounter on a cocoa farm near Sankore in the Brong-Ahafo Region when he became the President of Ghana.

When I listened to Dr Bawumia giving his thought-provoking lectures at the Central University College last week, I couldn't help but give him standing ovation in my room anytime he made a point.  I am not a scientist and so I cannot tell whether like a blood bank we also have a gene bank.  If indeed we have one, then it is time for us to tap the genes of people like Dr Bawumia, Tsatsu Tsikata, Nana Akufo-Addo, Kwesi Botchwey, J.J. Rawlings, J.A. Kufuor, Vladimir Antwi-Danso and many more intellectuals in this country to be used in our research laboratories for the benefit of future generations.  This Bawumia man is a whiz-kid who should not be left to die with his fine brains like what happened to Professor Kofi Abrefa Busia and Professor Mills.

The story of my encounter with Mr Kufuor at a cocoa farm in the Brong-Ahafo Region is meant for Dr Bawumia and Nana Akufo-Addo. Much as we need to deliver such heart-raking messages to those who can read, write and understand the Queen's English, the time has come for Dr Bawumia, who speaks perfect Twi, Hausa, Dagbani, Mamprugu and some languages in the north, to pitch his camp in the Brong-Ahafo, Upper West, Upper East and the Northern Regions of Ghana as well as the zongos and deliver the messages to our unfortunate brothers and sisters who did not get the opportunity to attend school but also live in these harsh economic realities.   When I sat my eighty-five-year-old mother down and explained to her what Dr Bawumia said that day, all the old lady could do was put her two hands on her head and shout 'Wei, Wei, Wei!'

Nana Akufo-Addo cannot afford to disappoint the suffering Ghanaians.  There is a job to be done and history is beckoning to him to take the mettle and do the job.  Nana should take his destiny into his own hands and start the way Kufuor started.  Immediately after the Sunyani Congress, Kufuor never rested on his oars until he finally won the election in 2000.  In the 2012 general elections, the people of the Eastern Region woefully disappointed Nana, their own kinsman.  Because we have many tenant farmers in that region, they voted on party lines and that was the more reason Nana could not garner enough votes there to tilt the scale.  Nana should spend time with these people and make them know that all what he wants to do as the president of Ghana is to introduce programmes like what ex-President Kufuor did to assuage their sufferings. Nana should not toe the Mahama line by telling them to vote for their kinsman.

What the NPP should know is that those living in the big cities will never fall prey to the NDC's lies and propaganda but our brothers and sisters who live in the villages are easy targets of the NDC campaign tricks.  One of their tricks is to impoverish the people in the rural areas and wait till an election year to go and dash them money and goodies and beg them for their votes to loot the state coffers while waiting for another election year. Managing the economy is not their priority but winning the next elections.

The free SHS mantra is as juicy today as it was two years ago.  Today, Mr Mahama has shamelessly agreed that a free SHS is feasible and that his government is going to implement it progressively in 2015.  We are about to end the first quarter of 2015 and the progressive free SHS is still an illusion.  I am yet to see a trickster who is smarter than this man ruling twenty-five million people living in a country called GHANA.

Apart from my good friend Mr Paul Afoko, the NPP National Chairman and Mr Kwabena Agyepong, the NPP General Secretary, the rest of the National Executive Members should vacate their luxurious homes in Accra and hit the ground running.  Madam Afiko Djaba and her colleagues in the women's wing should wipe off their lip shines and learn how to mingle with the poor women in the villages.  The high heel shoes should give way to canvasses and boots. John Boadu, Sammy Awuku and their colleagues too should limit their presence on TV and radio stations and go back to their respective towns and villages and spread the message of change.  You see,  what people in Accra do not know is that folks in the small towns and villages do not have time to listen to comments on TV stations and only listen to news in Twi and other local languages as they prepare to go to their farms and markets.  The noise people make on TV and radio stations have no bearing at all.  When people are busy trying to make ends meet you sit on TV and radio stations talking about GDP, inflation, economic growth, IMF bailout, etc.

One of the top 10 cheap cigars is produced by General Cigar in Honduras with Honduran, Nicaraguan and Dominican filler tobaccos.  It is called Sancho Panza Double Maduro Quixote.  So here I go puffing and polluting the air one more time.

By Eric Bawah