Opinion › Feature Article       17.02.2019

Even Professional Terrorists Like John Mahama Are Morbidly Afraid of Death

He may have deliberately or conveniently forgotten this, so we need to remind former President John Dramani Mahama that in the leadup to the 2016 general election, he had the General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, lead a goon squad of NDC “Health Walkers” intentionally and savagely divert the official route of their walk/march onto a street that passed directly in front of the Nima private residence of then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. But for the timely intervention of personnel from the nearby Nima Police Station, or Precinct, the Akufo-Addo residence would have been turned into a veritable target-practice shooting range or at the worst a war zone, as the Asiedu-Nketia Gang proceeded to fire several rounds of live bullets into the Akufo-Addo compound.

Back then, Nana Akufo-Addo, who had been out on the stumps somewhere in the northern part of the country – Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo was, however, at home – did not bitterly complain, let alone call a massive conference of international diplomats resident in the country, as Mr. Mahama recently did at Peduase, near Aburi, to scandalously and unwisely bitch about the purported use of state-sponsored vigilantes during the January 31st Ayawaso-West Wuogon byelection (See “Mahama Describes Osafo-Maafo As [a] Hypocrite” Modernghana.com 2/16/19). It is very unlikely that a compulsive liar and pathological scam-artist like Mr. Mahama had frankly and honestly informed these international diplomats, most of whom probably had better intelligence and a far more balanced perspective on the events that transpired at Ayawaso-West Wuogon on that very predictable Thursday, that it was the “revolutionarily rooted” National Democratic Congress that invented the barbaric culture of violence-inflected byelections and the primitive tradition of ballot-box-stuffing and snatching at polling stations in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.

Indeed, were he a decent and an honest man like his most formidable political opponent, Mr. Mahama would have also pointed to such striking cases in point as Agbogbloshie, Talensi, Akwatia and Atiwa, among a host of others, that had been largely schemed up and orchestrated by operatives of the Mills-Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress. I have a confident feeling that not much was achieved at the Peduase diplomatic confab, for the simple reason that shortly prior to this patent diplomatic charade or veritable circus, the former Rawlings’ Communications Minister and infamous “Shit-Bomber” had let it be known loud and clear that it was perfectly in synch with its institutional design and character for the party that cut his political teeth to routinely indulge in wanton acts of violence.

For instance, rather than expose the operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party for being guilty of violent political activities in the recent past, Mr. Mahama chose to portray what he smugly boastfully, if also unwisely, termed as the “true colors” of the operatives of the National Democratic Congress as one that entailed an enviable level of record-setting terroristic violence that could never be equaled by the operatives of the New Patriotic Party. “When it comes to the deft application of violence in a bid to having our way with power in this country, unopposed, we have absolutely no competitor,” Mr. Mahama was widely reported to have said during an electioneering campaign tour of the Adaklu Constituency in the Volta Region.

We know through reliable media reports that there were absolutely no incidents of violence at any polling station in the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency during the January 31st byelection, contrary to what the former President would have the global community believe. Then also, the Chairwoman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, namely, Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, who has reportedly appeared as a witness before the Short Commission, established by Nana Akufo-Addo to thoroughly investigate allegations of election-related violence in the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency, has pointedly noted that there were absolutely no violent incidents at any polling station in the aforementioned constituency. And so, we can all safely and perfectly agree that a hypocritical Mr. Mahama, in the very wise words of Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the Akufo-Addo Senior Minister, left Peduase holding the detached bottom of a missing cooking pot. Clearly, Mr. Mahama is an irredeemably defeated man who is having and extremely difficult time overcoming his Stygian funk of denial.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 16, 2019
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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