Akufo Addo: A Shame and Curse or Asset but Doomed?

After the Republicans Congress in 2016, winner of the Iowa primaries, and loser to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Texas Congressman, was asked to endorse then Republican nominee Donald Trump for the USA general elections. Looking at how "dirty" Donald Trump contested that primaries, Ted Cruz refused to do such a thing. Instead, he said that "history is not kind to men who hold Mussolini's jacket".

By that Ted Cruz meant that, political "drug barons", tax evaders, thieves, and criminals who are enablers of evil and steal public funds to finance their private companies, shall not succeed no matter the support they are able to garner. Neither shall they prosper in the evil they enable nor the private companies they cut the throat of the country in order to finance.

Fellow Ghanaians, there's no gainsay that the perplexing but thriving excruciating economic doldrums and mess, due to profligacy and corrupt leadership in this country, has rendered our dear president, His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo an international Almajiri - beggar.

Is the God of the masses punishing him for the avoidable shameful embarrassments he has been battling in recent times?

While it might not be a crime to be a humble beggar, there's everything problematic with hypocritical and arrogant beggars. Those who stutter in order to sell medicine for stammerers; and beggars who get angry when given coins.

As if his international begging accolade and albatross hanging around his neck is not bad enough, President Akufo Addo is now dangerously navigating the "international waters" of alignment, in siding with a world's superpower. Very careless of him.

In his book, Kwame Nkrumah: Vision and Tragedy, David Rooney touts the first president of Ghana for his national, continental, and global vision summarized into three principal components: national unity, total liberation and unity of Africa, and Nkrumah's vision of non-alignment in the Cold War between the world superpowers.

These principal components of Nkrumah's vision (find details on page 15 of that book) were what laid the foundation of the economic, social, and political paths for our modern-day Ghana as a proud nation.

While tribalism and international begging have both robbed African countries of the unity, dignity and total liberation Nkrumah envisaged, Akufo Addo as leader of one of the most influential nations in Africa has put a dagger to the last vision of Nkrumah not to meddle in the geopolitical game of world's superpowers.

Despite the economic agony and mismanagement his reign of economic terror has caused us which Ghanaians seem to have forgiven when we choose not to go the Sri Lanka way, the president's recent moves is placing Ghana directly in the "killing zone" - between the "trenches" of the USA and Russia.

What form of dangerous international begging and attention seeking stuns is this?

As if President Akufo Addo is not satisfied with the economic mess he has created, the danger he has exposed citizens of Ghana to, the president has chosen the path of humiliation in his recent needless and shameful admonition to other African states he sermonize not to beg from the west when he himself has become an international Almajiri.

Almajiri has a broader connotation, but it sometimes derogatorily refers to those professional beggars in Zongo (Muslim communities).

This is a man who has simultaneously put us in pain, danger, and shame. Could this be a curse? What does President Akfo Addo gain in causing pain, shame, and literally launching war of terror on Ghana? Is it because of his hate for President Mahama to becoming president again? So he wants to destroy Ghana, or that is his form and style of leadership?

But like Ted Cruz put it, history has never been kinder to the man who holds Mussolini's jacket.

With unprecedented corruption, most unfortunate nepotism, and the democratic and political space become an abattoir for journalists, all crowned by shameless leadership, one has no choice than to believe that President Akufo Addo has inherited the evil jacket of Benito Mussolini.

It was Rutger Bregman who said that "time and again we hope for better leaders, but all too often those hopes are crashed. The reason, says Professor Keltner, is that power causes people to lose the kindness and modesty that got them elected, or they never possessed those sterling qualities in the first place. In a hierarchically organised society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition.

They’re shameless."
Fellow Ghanaians, nothing is most painful and shameful like the conundrum of embarrassment and outright shamelessness President Akufo Addo has subjected Ghana and Ghanaians to since his inauguration. From his plagiarized speech to the latest continental embarrassment of preaching what he is not, you see a King in borrowed robes. What a shame?

You see, there's huge difference between being embarrassed and being shameful. Yes.

Every proud thief is shameless, but a student who can't show failed exam result to his parents is due to being embarrassed. This is the striking difference between the National Democratic Congress, NDC, and the New Patriotic Party, NPP. And the current NPP under President Akufo Addo in particular has rather become completely disgusting, having been addicted and immune to shame.

Is it not an air of supreme disgrace for a government whose officials steal state funds through private companies and refuse to resign after it has been uncovered? These are not only shameless, they are criminals! In Sha Allah, they shall break the 8 in jail!

And does it not amount to immunization of shamelessness that President Akufo Addo and his finance minister decide to celebrate an economic growth achieved as a result of the IMF intervention while they bragged of being proud to seeking the institution's aid again?

Well, after Data Bank took the lion's share of the needless borrowed funds, the government collected its spittle with its own face. It didn't hesitate to go back to the IMF after two years of economic turmoil amidst unfortunate chest-beating and arrogant statements.

Fellow Ghanaians, what is most shameful than to claim competence and glory for the current appreciation of the Ghana Cedi and the deflating inflation we are experiencing? That, an economy they drove into the abyss of mess is "recovering" due to the principle behind the law of diminishing returns, and they are with unabashed mendacity celebrating and knocking their chests? Shame!

You see, the law of diminishing returns in elementary economics states that, "in productive processes, increasing a factor of production by one unit, while holding all other production factors constant, will at some point return a lower unit of output per incremental unit of input". In simple terms, diminishing returns can be explained with the concept of exponential growth that would eventually take a nosedive due to constraints in realizing some of the factors responsible for the growth exponentially. Such as limited resources.

With this concept, the "growth" of the Ghana Cedi from five Cedis against a dollar to 17 Cedis against a dollar, experience a diminishing returns when factors such as lack of income by people resulted in the decline of purchasing power which forced inflation rate to stabilize. Simply because people have no money to buy anything anymore. Abd when people can't buy, exchange rate is forced to stabilize as well because nobody buys any foreign goods to be sold to a country reduced and debased to penury and poverty capital of the world. Hence, the Cedi has no choice than to appreciate because the system is drained of cash that would influence factors of depreciation of any currency.

What is happening in the Ghanaian economy is like a boil that is swelling because you have no medicine to treat it. However, the boil swells to a point and bursts out of lack of treatment which brings some form of relief because the ballooning of that part of the body with the boil has stopped. It still remains untreated and very soon, it would begin swelling again because you didn't treat it to achieve the relief. Rather, it would create a sore.

So, with the principle of diminishing returns, any fool can predict that there's an elixir of hope after a calamity.

It's therefore very embarrassing that the Bank of Ghana and the Vice President can be claiming that the latest rise of the Cedi against the dollar is due to their policy implementation. It's like celebrating a goal as yours that you didn't score: very shameful.

What measures have they implemented to cause the arrest of the galloping Cedi if not the principle behind the law of diminishing returns brought about that currency appreciation?

Trust me, the government has done absolutely nothing apart from the shame and humiliation the president keeps invoking upon us. It might not be his fault; he is holding the jacket of Mussolini. The president has been cursed.

In Sha Allah, I Shall Return.