Letter From The President (XXXI): A happy "Adios" to Kofi Wayo

Countrymen and women, opponents and loyalists, Whiles I was chilling out in the opulence of Geneva last week, pretending to be concerned about the inability of the people of Adiembra to browse the internet, I was informed about Kofi Wayo’s decision to quit my party. Obviously, Kofi Wayo is one of those who will choose to refer to the political association I belong to as the Non-Performers Party and has therefore decided to leave. Good for him. What took him so long? Perhaps, he was hoping that I could change my ways and adopt some of the doctrines he has been preaching with so much conviction and that annoying American accent of his. By and large, I am happy that he has left but I have this little tinge of sadness in me about his departure. We will no longer benefit from the largesse he freely gave out in support of our electioneering campaign some three years ago. His money in fact, helped me to get onto the Black Star stool. Notable among his contributions to the 2000 campaign was the establishment of the East Ayawaso Constituency (the Nima Area) office of the party. He pumped so much into this office that, at the press conference to announce his decision to leave the party, he decided to demand the repayment of the money he contributed to the setting up the Nima offices of the party. Now, more than ever, I am proud to say like Acheampong said some decades ago that, “yentua” – we won’t pay. Why should we pay Kofi Wayo for an act which legitimized the flurry of innuendos and insults he hurled at me and my government. Kofi Wayo’s decision to leave our party has confirmed to me that there are people in this country who just enjoy being in opposition. He started criticizing my government the very minute my butt touched the luxurious upholstery of the Black Star Stool. The fact remains that even though he was always puffing on a cigar, as if he needed to smoke out some rats in his head, Kofi Wayo raised some important issues which needed urgent attention from my administration. If this were a ‘normal’ country with citizens who knew and demanded their right for good governance, Kofi Wayo would have made perfect sense with his criticisms and who knows, he could even have made a fine President. But, hey, this is not a normal country. And I thank God for that. So I told Kofi Wayo that this country is not a normal country. I advised him so many times on how he could enjoy the benefits of having his party in government. For instance, if he had ventured into road construction we could have given him a very lucrative contract to fill all the potholes in the streets of Dagbon. Alternatively, he could have gone into real estate, where we needed to rehabilitate and landscape bungalows for ministers who had been told to undo and redo everything the previous government had left behind. Kofi Wayo was neither interested in road construction nor real estate development. “Gimme TOR”, he constantly demanded. He was so persistent with his demands and he almost convinced me to make him the manager of loss-making Tema Oil Refinery. Then someone drew my attention to the fact that Kofi Wayo was always puffing on a cigar and warned me that TOR is not a place for smokers. Then I realized that if I gave Wayo the chance the manage TOR, he might inadvertently set the place on fire with his cigar fumes. So when he came to me and shouted “Gimme TOR”, I screamed back, “No way”. That’s when Kofi Wayo became wise. He started saying all the right things about the large size of my government, my failure (or incapacity) to fight corruption, governmental extravagance, my refusal to tighten my belts like every Ghanaian had been told to do, my tourist adventures and my failure to fulfill some campaign promises. He ceased to be a politician and committed the ultimate act of betrayal, forgetting that the very people he claimed to be speaking for were quite content with the change in government and did not care one hoot whether or not the new government was really producing some ‘positive change’. Kofi started hopping from one radio station to another advertising my government’s incompetence only to be ridiculed by the people he was speaking for. I know that a lot of people think Kofi Wayo is nuts. He has failed to take note of the fact that many people think that he is either too idealistic or mad or an uneven combination of the two characteristics – i.e. idealistically mad or madly idealistic. I think he stayed too long in America that he is has forgotten that Ghanaians do not expect too much from their president and they do not care one hoot what the government does with their tax money. I might not have fulfilled a lot of my campaign promises but I know that Ghanaians are satisfied with me. Sometimes I regret making some of those promises because from hindsight I now know that I didn’t have to dig so deep into the deceptive recesses of my mind to come up with those ingenious promises. Ghanaians are just glad to have me around for a change. The people on the street do not care so much about the number of ministers in the country or the many special assistants they have. The people on the streets are so busy being hungry that they don’t care to ask why, for example, there is a Minister for Education, Youth and Sport, another Minister of State at the Ministry for Education Youth and Sports, an additional Minister for Tertiary Education and yet another Minister for Basic, Secondary and Girl-child Education. It is only people like Kofi Wayo who have eaten to their fill who care about the fact that there are more ministers of state in this country than dentists. Kofi Wayo wants to turn this country into another America, where the president travels in one stretch limousine with a small motorcade. In Africa, there are no limousines and the president has to travel in a convoy of 20 cars with 18 dispatch riders. The people expect the president to travel like that. The president cannot travel in a convoy of less than 3 cars with 4 dispatch riders. If he does so, the people will think less of him as a president. Kofi Wayo and his ilk do not want to see my ministers traveling around the country in the latest Mercedes Benzes and Lexus cross country vehicles. Is it jealousy or what? If Ministers start traveling around in Ticos, how will anyone be able to differentiate between them and the ordinary people? Kofi Wayo paa. Kofi Wayo says that me and my people are “inflexible and archaic” in our thinking. So bad for him that in spite of his flexible modern thinking, he is not the president. I suppose that Kofi Wayo thinks that the man he is now following, Coconut Mahama, aka 2-Sure, is much more flexible in his thinking than I am. I can tell you that being inflexible and archaic in your thinking is the best way to become a president of this country. Coconut Mahama has been contesting for the presidency since 1992 and his flexible/modern mind took him nowhere near the Black Star Stool. After all has been said and done, I am very glad that Kofi Wayo has now decided to leave our party. He is too good for us. He wanted me to behave like the president of a poor country, when my neighbour Eyadema, whose country is even poorer lives like the Sultan of Brunei. What sort of president will Ghanaians take me for? I am tired of his pontificating and therefore I am happy that Kofi Wayo has come to his senses and left our party. He should have left long ago – once again, let me say that he’s too good for us. So bad he is going to waste his money on Coconut Mahama. He should have formed his own party and come to face me on electoral grounds next year. I would have shown him how to play ‘kokofu football’ and made him aware that Ghanaians have never had it so good, having an excellent one like on the Black Star Stool. Still, the Best Ever, J. A. Fukuor [email protected]