Haruna Iddrisu Knows Akufo-Addo Is a Better President than John Mahama

Maybe Ghanaians need to be constantly reminded about the fact that Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Leader, who is also the NDC’s MP for Tamale-South Constituency, in the Northern Region, was the John Dramani Mahama-appointed Employment and Labor Minister when the humongous sum of $ 72 million (USD) went missing at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), in the runup to the 2016 General Election. And then, we all, that is, the global Ghanaian citizenry, can begin to fully appreciate the central role played by the kleptocratic and unconscionable leadership of the previous Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress that brought Ghanaians to the present brink of acute economic crisis for whose most pressing solution, President Akufo-Addo recently and earnestly solicited the financial assistance of the twin Bretton-Woods establishments of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and The World Bank, namely, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

What, of course, made the SSNIT mega-heist even more scandalous was the fact that the missing money belonged to Ghanaian civil and public service retirees or pensioners, that is, bona fide and responsible hardworking citizens who had toiled for the good of the country for an average of 25 to 40 years and had their paycheck deductions profitably invested for use until the time that they were too old and incapable of actively working to feed and take care of themselves and their families and relatives, in most cases. Now, these are the sort of reprobate characters and self-serving and morally and politically insensitive and irresponsible leaders who are singularly represented by the man who had his Master of Sociology Degree withdrawn by the members of the Academic Council of the country’s flagship academy, to wit, the University of Ghana, some dozen-and-odd years ago, because Mr. Iddrisu, at the time a Deputy Minister in the government of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, had egregiously violated the intellectual property rights that govern all serious and decent scholarship.

In brief, what the foregoing means is that rather conduct original and knowledge-laden academic research by literally burning the proverbial mid-night oil, a pathologically dishonest and intellectually indolent and abjectly disingenuous Mr. Iddrisu had been found to have assembled the ideas and the research findings of other hardworking and creative scholars and simply shamelessly passed them off as his own. Well, the equal surprise here is that for quite a considerably while, this intellectual thief would get away with his criminal theft of a patently undeserved Master of Sociology Degree granted him by his thesis committee at the University of Ghana. Which, in a quite significant sense, also speaks to the apparently precipitous decline in academic standards at the country’s oldest and foremost degree-awarding institution.

At any rate, the remark made by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to the Chief and the people of the Yapei-Kusawgu District or Constituency, in the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, was spot, as it were. But, of course, as was to be expected, the remark was deliberately decontextualized to make it seem as if the proverbial “Little Man from Kyebi” was needlessly bragging about being the best postcolonial Ghanaian Leader or President which, when one seriously ponders the matter more closely and objectively, by the way, may very well be true. But, of course, that is not the point or thrust of this column. At Yapei-Kusawgu, in the very Savannah Region which is also the home region and the electoral stronghold of former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama, the Chief or invested Yagbonwura and his elders and people had bitterly complained about the scandalous fact that although one of the sons of the soil, as it were, was once holed up at Jubilee House, that is, the Presidency, for the relatively long stretch of 8 years, to-date, there exists not a single general-purpose secondary school, much less a senior secondary technical school in the district or constituency.

As well, some 17 settlements and communities in the Yapei-Kusawgu Constituency, represented in Ghana’s Parliament by Mr. John Jinapor, the Mahama clansman and kleptocratic moneybag, have yet to be connected to the national power or electricity grid. All of which is an inescapable indictment of the inexcusable leadership irresponsibility on the part of the man who is also widely alleged to have taken more bribes than any other Ghanaian leader since Independence. And for good measure, it is equally significant to note that the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of Comrade Mahama’s own party, the National Democratic Congress, personally and indelibly caused to be put on record that his former protégé was the most corrupt politician in Ghana to have ever been entrusted with the democratic reins of governance.

Now, Dear Reader, what testimony that is akin to the latter could be deemed to be more authoritative than that which came from the proverbial horse’s own mouth? In short, what Nana Akufo-Addo meant by his grossly distorted comment or remark to the Chief and the people of the Yapei-Kusawgu Constituency, was that in him, the Gonja people and subnation had, finally, been gifted by “Divine Providence” – my profound apologies to Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Gonja – with a President who was sensitive and responsive to the needs and concerns of the people of the Yapei-Kusawgu District, one who was also willing to facilitate the rapid and salutary development of the district, in spite of the fact that this group of ethnic Gonjas had consistently and perennially voted against the leadership of the one progressive political party that has provided them with every single one of the social-intervention programs and projects that have become available to them in the 30 years of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican dispensation.

Now, tell me, My Dear Reader, what is so “disparaging” and “insulting” about the unvarnished truth that Nana Akufo-Addo told the Chief and the people of that part of Gonjaland? What is really “disparaging” and “insulting,” to be certain, is the fact that for three decades, Gonja politicians like former President John “Akonfem-Kanazoe Ouagadougou” Dramani Mahama and Mr. John Abu Jinapor have literally taken them for granted.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 16, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]