The Book that President John Dramani Mahama forgot to read

This is Page 151 from my well-thumbed copy of the political science classic, The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli is a book that EVERY politician MUST read.

For very good reasons the book is a recommended reading in most Political Science classes.

Unfortunately, it is a book that I think that Ghana’s former president John Mahama refused to read.

Niccolo Machiavelli was neither a moralist nor an Ethicist. His classic was a practical guide on how to win and retain power.

He was not concerned with the MEANS, his goal was focused exclusively on the END. Per Machiavelli, the End (capturing and retaining political power) justifies any means used!

Those who have met and parlayed with the former president of Ghana described him as an affable and likable human being. His handsome bearing apparently has melted the hearts of many from the opposite sex.

His hardcore partisans no doubt love him to bits.

All that is jolly and well when you are not up against a Ruthless political operator like President Nana Dankwa Akufo-Addo, a man who leaves no one in doubt that he has read The Prince, and knows what it takes to win and retain power.

Strips of all niceties and pretensions, any political agitation whose aim is not singularly devoted to winning and retaining power is a total waste of time.

I did my best to point out that Mahama simply lacks what it takes to dethrone an ultra-determined leader like Nana Akufo-Addo.

In the piece, “Who needs Mahama 2.0,” I wrote inter Alia: “I am not an NPP partisan, but I can understand if the party’s rented mouths counter the question of a PhD with: And so, what? One Mr. Goodluck Jonathan also brandishes a PhD, ask Nigerians how that helped their country.

To the enthusiasm generated by the gender, NPP partisans can ask if Margaret (the milk snatcher) Thatcher, Joyce Banda (Malawi), Indira Ghandhi (India), and Eileen Sirleaf (Liberia) were not female leaders, and how did that help their countries.

More importantly, NDC partisans should get ready to answer the question: What single social intervention policy has their party introduced in its long years in power?

For all their faults, corruption and all, Ghanaians will remember President Kufuor for his National Health Insurance Scheme. And despite the gargantuan corruption in his administration, Nana Akufo-Addo will go down in history as the second president, after Kwame Nkrumah, to introduce a free education policy.”

You can read the article here:

https://www.modernghana.com/news/1015139/who-needs-mahama.html

And the update here:

https://www.modernghana.com/news/1018472/who-needs-mahama-20-update.html

Instead of reasoning along with me and see what they can glean from my sober analyses and very fair criticism of their man, Mahama’s supporters took offense and replied with the only weapon in their arsenal - vitriolic invectives.

One of them was an Alhaji whom I respected a lot. I was taken aback by the shallowness of the rebuttals he wrote in response to my posts. Another one of them owns a TV station in the North of Ghana and, apparently, any criticism of Mahama, however well-intentioned, is a personal affront - he simply descended into the gutter and scattered mud all around.

I did what I usually do whenever an argument turns into personal insults: BLOCK the offender.

Let’s go back a little bit into the recent past. I was a member of the Panelists on Frititti Radio in Amsterdam hosted by my good Comrade, John McNally Boateng. Our discussions on the 2016 elections were rather heated as some of my co-panelists misconstrued my analyses as support for the then Presidential Candidate Akufo-Addo. They didn’t like my submissions about his winning the elections. Needless to say that the man won as I predicted.

Four years later, the NDC people appeared not to have learned any lesson from their defeat. The main reason they lost the 2016 elections is precisely the same one that made them ‘lose’ the 2020 presidential election: Complacency.

In politics, as in life, only a fool counts his chickens before they are hatched.

There is little or no doubt that John Mahama is a very nice human being. But he simply doesn’t appear to have the ruthless streak that is needed to upstage a battle-hardened, battered and bruised Old Warrior like Akufo-Addo.

Anyone who has taken the time to read up on the president and followed his long political career should have known that there’s no way he will not do EVERYTHING that is NECESSARY for him to retain power.

Once that is noted and understood, the daunting task then is to figure out how to beat the man at his own game.

Unlike Mahama when he held power, the man task President Akufo-Addo set for himself and successfully prosecuted was to rejig the entire political landscape of the country and firmly established himself as the new Colossus of Ghana Politics.

From the Electoral Commission through the Military Formations to the Supreme Court, the very energetic president went to work. He used the tools of his office to stamp his firm authority on every facet of power in the country. The constitution gave him broad powers and he did not shy away from using them. You can accuse him of immorality or even amorality, but not of illegality.

Everything the man did was under the ambit of the laws of Ghana.

The NDC, like the Democratic Party in the USA, refused to use their time in office to promote their core agendas, the NPP, like the Republican Party doesn’t have the compunction.

While the late president Atta Mills relished in his Asomdwehene sobriquet, Nana Addo is not bothered with such appellations.

Alas, Mahama and his people chose to go to battle with an opponent who held all the aces. They stubbornly refused to listen to contrary advices, however sound.

Today, they gnash teeth.

You can read about The Prince here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince

Let’s listen to Niccolo Machiavelli:

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”

“Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.”

“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved”

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

Fẹ̀mi Akọmọlàfẹ́

December 25, 2020