CSOs Are More Active Because NDC Has Been a Massive Failure

It ought to be obvious to Prof. Ransford Yaw Gyampo, the political scientist of the University of Ghana, by now that if the members of the main parliamentary opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the political opposition, at large, have been less vocal than the leaders and members of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), it is primarily because during the 8 years that the movers and shakers of the NDC held the reins of governance, Presidents John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and John Dramani Mahama did a diddly little to absolutely nothing for the improvement in the quality of life of the average Ghanaian citizen, besides fiercely and shamelessly defending “the inalienable constitutional right” of Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome to stealing the humongous sum of GHȻ 51.2 Million belonging to the Ghanaian taxpayer (See “CSOs More Active Than Opposition – Gyampo” StarrFM.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/5/20).

To be certain, all that the NDC’s parliamentary opposition politicians have been doing ever since they were kicked out of Jubilee House and their numerical domination of seats in the House drastically reduced, has been to vehemently oppose and protest any salutary and visionary program or project that the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has decided to implement for the improvement in the quality of life of the average Ghanaian citizen and the ability of our youths to creditably compete in an increasingly technological global community. We have, for example, witnessed the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority vehemently opposing the Akufo-Addo-implemented fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative, on the dubious grounds that this policy that looks certain to place Ghana on the same intellectual and cultural pedestal with the most advanced of civilizations, such as the United States, France, Britain, Russia, Japan and China in less than a generation is not fiscally sustainable.

Candidate John “Akonfem-SADA” Dramani Mahama has even had the temerity of claiming that the fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative has been tried before by the governments of some other African countries, and that the results indicated that the fee-free SHS Policy Initiative was patently unwise and impracticable. Meanwhile, we have the same rabidly anti-Akufo-Addo politicians lining their pockets in the form of the criminal drawing of double salaries, the rigging up of Judgment-Debt extortion scams that have cost the country billions of dollars, as well as such plain and raw Mega-Scams as that which was fronted by Mr. Woyome, in which the entire leadership of the National Democratic Congress, including the extant President and Vice-President, namely, Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills and John “Airbus-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama criminally conspired to extort the aforementioned GHȻ 51.2 Million from our National Treasury and comfortably divided up the same among the topmost leadership of the National Democratic Congress, while hundreds of thousands of Ghanaian youths had their education callously truncated or abbreviated at the middle school level, presently called the Junior High School or JSS, in local Ghanaian parlance.

And guess what, Dear Reader, now Candidate Mahama is fiercely fighting to be ceded undeserved credit for the implementation of the fee-free SHS Policy Initiative. Prof. Gyampo may also want to lift up his head, look the average Ghanaian citizen in the eye and tell the rest of us whether any flesh-and-blood human politician with this criminal record of abjectly poor political performance has the moral right and/or authority to keep our crackerjack and unimpeachably patriotic and visionary leaders of the New Patriotic Party on their toes.

If, as Candidate Mahama asininely joked recently, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been running backwards with the baton of leadership, ever since the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-South took over the reins of democratic governance from an irreparably failed Little Dramani, this is decidedly because the “Akyem Mafia Capo” has had to literally backtrack in order to fix the stygian mess left behind by a pathologically narcissistic and kleptocratic former President John “Embraer-SADA” Dramani Mahama, including having to re-fund the John Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which was effectively bankrupted by the Bole-Bamboi, Akufo-Addo-created, Savannah Region, native.

Yes, the leaders of our so-called Civil Society Organizations have the moral heft, for the most part, or the credibility, to put Jubilee House and Parliament on their toes, as well as the Judiciary, of course, because they have not been directly involved in some of these political shenanigans and corrupt activities detailed above. But, of course, it also cannot be gainsaid that former Civil Society Organizational “Watchdogs” like Dr. Clement Apaak, the current NDC’s Member of Parliament for Builsa-South, in the Upper-East Region, have actually used their CSO platforms to collusively and corruptly and opportunistically transitioned into plum executive positions at Jubilee House and, presently, legislative positions.

So, in short, it is not as if there are any neat or clear-cut distinctions between the activities of the leadership of these so-called Civil Society Organizations, many of which are both foreign and locally sponsored by some of the same politicians that these wily CSO leaders pretend to be putting on their toes. That was what Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, the former Editor of the Daily Graphic, meticulously sought to teachably point out very recently.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 20, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]