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28.11.2020 Feature Article

Did Mahama Bribe These Misguided Legon Political Scientists Too?

Did Mahama Bribe These Misguided Legon Political Scientists Too?
28.11.2020 LISTEN

It is only a drunken fool who is apt to seriously doubt the fact that going into the 2020 General Election, Ghana’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has absolutely no chance of giving the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) the proverbial run for the latter’s money. The Presidential Trial-and-Error Mahama-led National Democratic Congress does not have even the metaphorical Chinaman’s Chance at clinching victory in the 2020 Presidential Election, much less dream of garnering a majority of the 275 Parliamentary seats. Which is why the decision by the leadership of the so-called Alliance for Social Equality and Public Accountability (ASEPA) to impugn the integrity and credibility of an opinion poll conducted by Dr. Owusu Mensah, a lecturer in the Political Science Department in the country’s premier tertiary academy, the University of Ghana, Legon, could not be reckoned to be more absurd (See “UG Survey Predicting Victory for Akufo-Addo Fake – ASEPA” RainBowRadioOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/27/20).

You see, what is fake is the patently unacademic idea that, somehow, all the faculty members of the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana ought to have either actively participated in or approved of Dr. Owusu Mensah’s polling of some 11,000 eligible voters for the survey to have warranted public confidence and credibility. This trend of thinking is nothing short of plain asinine. The fact of the matter is that all that the conductor of the opinion poll needed was a reasonably well-trained team of students, both graduates and undergraduates, in the development and the administering of the questionnaires and the proper sampling of the respondents or those surveyed. The timing of the polling is also materially irrelevant. All that matters here is that the polling methodology used is globally proven to meet the optimum standards or best practice protocols.

Ultimately, the question of whether President Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo gets retained for four more years will be strictly dependent on the quality of governance of the ruling New Patriotic Party during the course of these last four years, vis-à-vis the administrative performance of the payola-wracked former President John Dramani Mahama in the previous four-and-half years, that is, from July 2012, when Mr. Mahama, via a self-described auspicious act of Divine Providence acceded to the Presidency, following the death of the then-President John Evans Atta-Mills. Dr. Owusu Mensah’s poll would have little to absolutely no impact, whatsoever, on voters the overwhelming majority of who would have already made up their minds long before the polling was conducted, largely based on how eligible voters reckon the performance of our presidential incumbent in the areas of the general economic development of the country, the fee-free Senior High School System, President Akufo-Addo’s yeomanly resuscitation of the Mahama-bankrupted National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the development of agriculture or the Planting for Food and Jobs, or Feed Ghana Program, and the creation of jobs with livable wages and salaries and the long-term sustainability of the same.

As well, President Akufo-Addo’s successful and globally lauded handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic, vis-à-vis Candidate Mahama’s abjectly messy handling of Dumsor, the perennially erratic energy supply, and the 2014 Cholera Epidemic, are the kinds of practical performance indicators upon which eligible voters will predicate their decision and choice over which of our two major Presidential Candidates deserves the mandate of the electorate for the next four years. And it is only a Ghanaian citizen who has been living on a planet completely cut off from Planet Earth that would have any difficulty deciding the obvious. Which, of course, is the fact that when it comes to the palpable socioeconomic development of the country, Candidate John Dramani Mahama is absolutely no peer or classmate of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The ASEPA leaders have absolutely no right or moral authority to lecture the administrators of the University of Ghana on the question of whether Dr. Owusu Mensah erred in the conduct of his opinion poll at the time that he did. The fact of the matter is that an opinion poll can be conducted and have its results released even within 48 hours of a general election. There is no stone-set rule governing the conduct of opinion polls. It is acute and morbid desperation that makes the leaders of ASEPA and their Mahama-salaried allies believe that they can control who gets to produce and publish what in the media and when. This is rather silly and nationally embarrassing. And just when did deliriously perceived academic fraud become the purview of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service, rather than the Academic Council of the University of Ghana?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

November 27, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]

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