Playing the Tribal Game Will Not Derail Bawumia’s Presidential Ambitions

I did not expect Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia’s ultimate climb into the seat of the Substantive Presidency to come without any attempt to impugn the Vice-President’s sense of justice and fairness in the selection or appointment of his staff. So, I was actually elated to see the release of a list of his staff of appointees in an end-of-year congratulatory message that the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana reportedly sent to these staff of appointees via his Facebook Wall (See “Bawumia Replies ‘Tribal Critics’ with Staffers List; Shows Ashantis, Other Tribes Dominate Vice Presidency” MyNewsGH.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/19/21). This is a game, I am sure, that Dr. Bawumia is intimately familiar with and thus may hardly need to be lectured about or tutored in, having already taken three shots before clinching the Vice-Presidency, together with President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, of course.

He has already weathered some of the vilest and most vicious attacks inside his own party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and from his own family, including his own birth mother, at one time or another, for him to worry too much about the vitriol-splattered road to the Presidency. Which, of course, is not to imply that the Simon Fraser and Oxford University graduate and internationally reputed economist ought to sit duck or take it literally lying supine. For, no doubt, Alhaji Bawumia is highly unlikely to lamely pull any punches, as it were. He would proportionately and appropriately serve his most ardent detractors as he is served in return, even as he is inevitably expected to be served. For that is the name of the game. This is also, undeniably, all for the good and healthy development of Ghana’s young but unarguably robust democratic culture.

But wait, there is something hypocritically bizarre about this premature attempt to sandbag or effectively sabotage the most qualified and experienced presidential candidate material heading into the 2024 Presidential Election. You see, the Bawumia Presidency, in terms of staffing, would not and ought not to be absolutely in any way any significantly different from those of his predecessors, namely, the presidencies of the late Messrs. Jeremiah John Rawlings and John Evans Atta-Mills; and, of course, the presidencies of Messrs. John Agyekum-Kufuor, John Dramani Mahama and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Actually, fortuitously privileged with hindsight and the “archival” experience and hard lessons learned from the current Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Presidency, the Presidency of Dr. Bawumia, vis-à-vis staffing, is apt to be a significant improvement on those of the predecessors of the North-East Region native, with his selection of cabinet appointees predicated squarely on sheer merit and proven record of enviable administrative performance than anything else.

Still, what fascinates me in a humorous sort way is this rather harebrained attempt to determine the percentage breakdown of the ethnicity of the 24 or 30 Bawumia presidential or vice-presidential staffers by the last names or surnames of these appointees. You see, these days, so thoroughly commingled are Ghanaians across ethnic and cultural lines that somebody with the surname of “Appiah” or “Adu” is just as likely to be an Akan of Asante or Akyem descent as much as a Dagomba-descended Ghanaian citizen with the surname of “Atta” or “Attah.” You have to specifically ask people with such names how they ethnically and culturally identify themselves before drawing any definitive conclusions one way or another. In other words, it is scandalous and inexcusably absurd, as well as downright illiterate, for anybody to cavalierly presume the name “Bawumia,” for just one obvious example, to be of Mamprusi/Mamprugu origin or ethnicity. You see, a “Mumuni Bawumia” whose mother happens to be an Asante, Bono or from any of the other Akan subethnic groups may very well self-identify as an Asante or simply as an Akan-descended person.

At any rate, the presidential nomination of Alhaji Bawumia, as well as that of any other prospective contenders for the presidency, will be squarely predicated on the performance track record of the subject of this column, as determined by party members, as clearly distinguished from the patently obsolete and politically and morally regressive delegate system, venturing into the 2024 Presidential Election. But, of course, as most of the readers of my columns may already know, my favorite 2024 presidential-election steed is our man from Walewale. I am not in any way thinking along the grossly and egregiously undemocratic lines of the infamous Swedru Declaration or the Rawlings-Mills Coronation. Even Little Dramani’s “Divine Providence” is well aware of the New Patriotic Party authorship of Fourth Republican Ghanaian Democracy.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 30, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]