Akufo Addo, A Desperate Nation Bulldozer And Not A Nation Builder

Fellow Ghanaians, as we count down to December 7, it is only laudable that we activate what author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie described as the “Bullshit Detector” in her address to Harvard's Class of 2018, in order to track down and vote out disuniting elements in the upcoming election.

Indeed, the maniacal thirst and ambition of President Akufo Addo for power and outright opportunistic populism, has led him as a late septuagenarian to govern Ghanaians with utter contempt for commonsense and reduction of leadership to a “Mafia style criminal enterprise” in the last four years!

The “Akyim Mafia”, as His Excellency latest moniker depicts him, is working tooth and nail to compromise the unity of the Republic for his pyrrhic victory with everything he lays his hands on.

But in the hindsight, it appears in recent times there seems to be a celebration of evil leadership and global catastrophes that had brought the entire globe to its knees exactly hundred years ago. Around this time, hundred years ago, unpopular leaders like Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, to some extent, Joseph Stalin, were in the pipeline of leadership of the world. And nature appears to be celebrating their century’s anniversary of wicked leadership that characterized the first quarter of the 20^th century with democratic tyrants and dictators across the globe today in the 21^st century. The Coronavirus pandemic’s reign of havoc on the globe might convince you. Around 1919, hundred and one years ago, like the coronavirus deaths, the world was in the business of estimating deaths and casualties due to the First World War “pandemic” in which over forty (40) million people perished! History appears repeating itself hundred years later, and that is why the world seems to have been plagued by very unfit leaders, especially, many of those who came into power in not too while ago.

Fellow Ghanaians, perhaps, our dear president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, is one of the afflicted heads-of-state who have been brought to power to reminisce the world of those days of evil leaders, who ruled with iron fits hundred years ago, but this time around in a democratic robe!

Personally, I do not classify president Akufo Addo among such leaders whom nature has forced upon humanity to remind us the ordeal of those who inhabited the planet hundred years ago, and to perhaps hint us with the experience they had been through. For me, the more I read about Saddam Hussein the more I see peculiar features between president Akufo Addo and the former Iraqi ruler.

In Akufo Addo, I see a leader who is not truthful to his followers like Saddam Hussein; In president Akufo Addo, I see a leader who would do anything to retain power despite the palpable implications and repercussions of dire consequences looming; I have seen in president Akufo Addo, like Saddam Hussein who borrowed over forty billion USA dollars from Saudi and Kuwait, to collapse his country under the guise of wanting to restore the old glory of the ancient city of Babylon (Iraq); Like Saddam Hussein who disliked a section of his own people (the Kurdish in northern Iraq), president Akufo Addo is a “stepfather” to some citizens, “a slave master” to yet other Ghanaians, and not a truly nation’s father to all Ghanaians! Like Saddam Hussein who some historians described as being worst than Adolf Hitler, president Akufo Addo is a personification of incompetence with a diarrhoea leadership the type of which Ghana never witnessed in the sixty-three years of our history. In fact, if President Akufo Addo did not become president of Ghana, we would have written his name in gold in the pantheon of our history as the most competent president we could not have to lead us. However, the man is less than competent to the bone after assuming political power. His leadership has redefined incompetence to Ghanaians and exonerated former President Mahama of the borrowed robes he was dressed in. In Dagbani, we say, “Kundung di-la yu bi’au zu’u, bin gbahara gar-o Mu’ani”. That, the wolf has only unjustly earned a bad name in the jungle, there are a devouringly deadlier wild beast in the jungle than the wolf.

Fellow Ghanaians, out of sheer propaganda by his political predators, former president Mahama has been unjustly labeled incompetent leader, president Akufo Addo is an epitome of incompetence whose only talent as far as leadership is concerned, is to “create-loot-and-share” the content of national kitty through his numerous opportunistic, fraudulent, ghost, and grossly misplaced and unsolicited projects! It is rather unfortunate in Ghana that in our political experimentation, tribalism comes first before intellect! A simple intelligent consideration of over 98% of what president Akufo Addo claims to be fixing are nothing more than a vehicle to looting and milking dry, our collective wealth he has callously borrowed to cement the ties between him and his family and friends at the gapping sore expense of the Ghanaian tax payer! The miracle is that, some very educated Ghanaians have either deliberately or ignorantly subscribed to this complete thieving agenda!

Fast forward, in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait the United States of America together with Russia, Egypt, and Syria joined military forces to launch the Operation Desert Storm (ODS) in 1991 to liberate the tiny but oil rich nation (Kuwait). According to Historians like Amatzia Baram, author of Saddam Hussein and Islam, in less than hundred hours Saddam Hussein and his more than hundred thousand troops were driven out of Kuwait. But because the USA forces did not occupy Iraq after driving him out of Kuwait, the Chemical Weapon user (on his own citizens) Saddam Hussein, thought the world’s exceptional powers (USA) was afraid of him so he declared victory on the Americans and called that humiliating encounter with the USA army as the Mother of all battles. He even built a Mosque and named it “the Mother of all battles”. Little did Saddam Hussein know the Operation Iraq Freedom’s was on the way on the March 19, 2003. The phony victory became the bitterest pill when Saddam was caught cowering in a hole.

Again, earlier, in 1988, Saddam Hussein declared another phony victory over Iran when he attacked the new regime of Ayatullahi Khomeni in 1980 when, in fact, over ten thousand Iraqi soldiers perished two years later, and over one million people died eight years later, over nothing. The worse of it all was when Saddam Hussein unleashed the Tabun chemical weapon on the Kurdish people of northern Iraq, and over five thousand Kurdish died instantly with ten thousand others maimed. [1]

With all this, Saddam Hussein was completely unperturbed. In fact, a Professor of Psychology in the University of Colorado, Frederick L Coolidge, described Saddam Hussein as a sadistic tyrant who took delight and amusement in inflicting pain on people, the Kurds. And upon all this, Saddam Hussein sought to seek the blessings of Allah when, according to Prof. Amatzia Baram, used his own blood to be used to write the entire Qur’an and placed it in his “Mother of all Battles” Mosque in Baghdad.

Fellow Ghanaians, pay attention here to activities of president Akufo Addo since the advent of his government. Indeed, unlike Saddam Hussein, Akufo Addo never invades any other country apart from, perhaps, what is gradually becoming a western Togoland today when he deployed troops to that part of the country during the voter registration exercise motivated by kickbacks and an avowed electoral heist stratagem to rig the upcoming December polls. Like Saddam Hussein, President Akufo Addo has been a proud declarer of phoney victories, in the last four years, over his so-called achievements: including the economic growth he emptily boasts about that is essentially phantom; the coronavirus war he never had the nerve to fight headlong, and propaganda of every other project of his has been on the dazzling height.

Remember our elders say if the war leader commands, “we shall fight to the last man”, he is actually the last man behind his soldiers.

Today, the hell Ghana has become, gradually, when some people do not longer see the need to belong to this geographical expression called Ghana, is due to the obsessive ambition to escape the eventuality of becoming a one term president. A reason president Akufo Addo bamboozled Ghanaians into exposing their lives, dangerously, to a disastrous pandemic like the coronavirus, to compile a very needless, civil-war inducing new voters register to assist him rig election amidst prognosticating of electoral doom for him in the impending “election of destiny” come December 7.

Let president Akufo Addo know that by the grace of the God he deceived with unwanted Cathedra he used as a vow to win the 2016 election, which he has been unable to complete in four years, he would never win this year’s election even if he invades hell!

Like Saddam Hussein, president Akufo Addo and his gigantic Guinness world record government, have been peddling injurious falsehood about achievements they never achieved. And these white lies and outright untruths have actually had a colossal impact on the good people of this country.

In the Islamic exegesis, there is a famous story told by Prophet Muhammad about Isa [Jesus Christ the son of Marriam (Mary)] when the latter was travelling with his disciples and met children swimming in a river. One of the children was jeering and cheering his colleagues joyously but he could not join his friends to swim because he was a cripple. So, the disciples lamented on behalf of the crippled child and asked the master Jesus as a miracle worker to heal the child so that he could play with his friends in the water. But Jesus insisted that they should let the will of God prevail for God is imperfect Creator and has taken away the use of the child’s legs for a reason. To this one of the disciples said, “but his face looks as if he would be a kind, and merciful child”. Then Jesus wiped the legs of the cripple to heal him. Immediately the child got up he dived into the water without any hesitation to swim with his friends. However, the disciples were still standing at the bank of the river expressing gratitude to God for His favours when the child suddenly and wickedly pressed one of his colleague’s head into the water! And before the disciples could rebuke him, the former crippled sat on another child’s neck into the water again, causing him to accidentally gulp down some water. The disciples looked at Jesus and heaved a heavy sigh of regret. Jesus Christ then called him back out of the water and instructed him to sit down. Immediately, he became a cripple again! Jesus Christ then said to the disciples, “did I not tell you that it is not out of wickedness on the part of God that this child is cripple?”

Fellow Ghanaians, when president Akufo Addo chased political power almost in the umpteenth time but woefully lose the elections, many Ghanaians thought God was wicked for denying him the power! Today, unless Ghanaians who are living under rocks, or the callous tribal lords and jingoists, we are all living witnesses to the abattoir and a living hell his government has subjected our dear country to. The man has ignored saner heads that have prevailed upon him to take of his knee on the neck of unbreathing country call Ghana! It is sobering epiphany!

Fellow Ghanaians, permit me to paraphrase the words of Pope Francis to end my epistle as a citizen and not spectator, of Ghana. According to Pope Francis, “rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruits; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves.” And that, “living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is…Life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you.”

Under president Akufo Addo in the last four years, the “others” have only lost their jobs and businesses. Happiness, joy, have become the thing of the past for the “others”.

Like the cripple of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), president Akufo Addo shall be called back out of political power to his position of opposition come December 7. The man is a bulldozer of the very things that bind Ghanaians together and not a bridge builder.

The author, Abdul Hakeem Iddrisu (the Young Prof.), is a youth activist and a Game Changer.

Contact him on 0557762967

[1] Narration by Dr. Ronen Zeidel, (in the Documentary: Evolution of Evil – part 07) Iraq Analyst, Tel Aviv University.