Voting for NDC Will Not Solve Your Problem

It is a disturbing eyesore, if you were to ask me to sincerely proffer my opinion on the same. I am talking about the Atwima-Takyima, Denkyemuoso and Boko Road, in the Kwadaso Constituency, in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area of the Asante Region. That is, if the photograph accompanying the news article captioned “We Will Vote for NDC – Angry Atwima NPP Members” Modernghana.com 10/29/20) is an accurate reflection of the deplorable state of the roadways in some parts of the Kwadaso Municipality. We are given to believe that this ongoing project, that is being constructed by a company named Asabea Constructions, was abandoned by the latter for reasons that the Otec-FM radio reporter does not tell his audience. At least not in the script or print version that I presently have before me.

The frustration of the residents of this electoral stronghold of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is quite understandable, having myself lived at the Sofoline Police Station and Roundabout in the late 1970s and the first-half of the 1980s, while an “A-Level” student at Prempeh College and a regularly featured poet at Anokyekrom of the Ghana National Cultural Center (GNCC). And especially since the Atwima-Takyiman, Denkyemuoso and Boko township residents have been staunchly backing the NPP since the inception of Ghana’s Fourth Republic. We are also informed that but for the timely intervention of the Assembly Member of the Kwadaso District or Constituency, Mr. David Asare, a massive protest demonstration would have been held to vehemently protest this apparent letdown by the Akufo-Addo Administration.

The Minister for Roads and Highways, obviously, does not need to be told by this avid student of the Ghanaian political scene to promptly step up to the proverbial plate and rectify matters before things get out of hand. I am also well aware of the fact that Mr. Kwasi Amoako-Atta is unarguably the most dynamic and indefatigable cabinet appointee to hold the cardinal portfolio of Minister of Roads and Highways in at least the past decade. Mr. Amoako-Atta needs to promptly investigate the cause of the apparent stoppage of work on the Atwima-Takyiman-Denkyemuoso roadway and get the construction of the aforesaid road right back on track.

On the whole, I am not really bothered by the anger-fueled threat by the members, supporters and sympathizers of the Kwadaso Constituency to massively and punitively switch their electoral allegiance and/or loyalty to the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). You see, if Candidate John “Akonfem-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama really cared about the quality of life of the residents of the Kwadaso Constituency, the most ethnocentric Fourth-Republican Ghanaian leader would have since long constructed the Atwima-Takyiman Denkyemuoso Road in the 8 years that the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, was holed up in Jubilee House as Vice-President to the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, four-and-half of these years as the substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

These understandably disgruntled citizens must also bear in mind the innumerable times that Candidate Mahama, as the substantive President of Ghana, has questioned the humanity and sense of gratitude of ethnic Asantes, in particular, and residents of the Asante Region as a whole. The Atwima-Takyiman-Denkyemuoso Road is in the deplorable state that it is presently not because the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, is as grossly incompetent as some of these angry party stalwarts cavalierly suppose, reportedly, but primarily because the work is enormous and stems from the kleptocratic and abject neglect of the “Survival-of-the-Fittest”-minded leaders of the National Democratic Congress, who have held the reins of governance for most of the last 40 years.

They may understandably not like the admittedly deplorable state of their roadways, but it would be even more logically sound for the residents of the Kwadaso Constituency to look at other equally critical sectors of the economy, such as education, health, agriculture and the remarkable industrial development project embarked upon by the Akufo-Addo-led Administration of the New Patriotic Party and realistically imagine what else the government can do and is demonstrably capable of doing for Ghanaians, in general, if it is given more time to rapidly move our country forward along the ladder of enviable progress and development.

Throwing their votes wastefully to the industrially and economically backward and thievish faux-social democratic party that got the people of Atwima-Takyiman and Denkyemuoso this far behind on the national development grid or ladder, to begin with, would unwisely be tantamount to sociopolitical and economic suicide. And it is crystal clear that this is the last direction in which the smart and patriotic citizens of Atwima-Takyiman and Denkyemuoso would prefer to go.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

October 29, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]