Afenyo-Markin Needs to Hit the Campaign Trail on Real Cause of Energy Crisis

I read the brief news report on his smack-on-target contribution to the Parliamentary Debate on the 2024 Budget Presentation recently delivered by Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister, and could not help but come to the definitive conclusion that the Deputy Majority Leader, Mr. Alexander Afenyo-Markin, is one of the New Patriotic Party stalwarts that Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia needs to promptly bring onto his team of electioneering-campaign strategists in the runup to the watershed and epoch-making 2024 Presidential Election (See “You Left Us with ‘Killer’ Take-or-Pay Deals but We’ve Kept the Lights on – Afenyo-Markin Slams Mahama Gov’t” Modernghana.com 11/22/23).

And here, on the question of the “watershed” and “epoch-making” December 2024 General Election, we are not facilely referring to the so-called Breaking-the-Eight mantra of some of the party stalwarts. Rather, the reference here is squarely to the imperative need for New Patriotic Party (NPP) strategists to be able to effectively communicate the dire implications of having the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “SADA Scam” Dramani Mahama return to Jubilee House with his criminally minded and inexcusably fraudulent policy of the so-called 24-Hour Economy, which is clearly a sheer propaganda slogan and not any well-thought-out policy proposal or initiative but the patently hairbrained rhetorical gimmickry of a pathologically self-deluded demagogue.

Fortunately, Ghanaian voters have more than ample evidence of his unspeakably dismal track record of gross administrative incompetence and insufferably crass arrogance to studiously guide them through the critical process of electing the one leader who will best serve their interests for the next four years immediately following the exit of a lame-duck President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. This is precisely where the indispensable input of youthful and socially responsible leaders and politicians like the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Effutu Constituency, in the Central Region, will be most needed.

It has often been said that, relatively speaking, the ruling New Patriotic Party has more competent and civically responsible leaders among the fold of its rank-and-file membership than the faux-socialist main opposition National Democratic Congress. I firmly believe in this widely held contention. Unfortunately, under the present Akufo-Addo Administration, the deployment of such brilliant and professionally competent men and women has not been as effective as it really could have been, and all primarily because virtually all our Fourth-Republican Presidents appear to have been inordinately afflicted with a kind of wanderlust that has made any progressive-minded patriotic Ghanaian citizen wonder whether each and every one of these leaders had expressly campaigned to be elected as Ghana’s Roving Ambassadors rather than our bona fide Chief Executives of State.

Truth be told: and it is that there is a scandalous lack of professional discipline among our leaders, a seemingly chronic and incurable malaise which has been amply remarked upon by such well respected Africanist historians and political scientists as David Apter, best known as the author of the authoritative tome titled “Ghana in Transition,” and Dennis Austin, the equally or, perhaps, even more authoritative scholar and author of the seminal historiographical classic tome titled “Politics in Ghana: 1946-1960.” It is the kind of chuckleheaded complacency that would make a Ghanaian president fly out of the country, on a prohibitively priced chartered jet, at the very height of an acute economic crisis, to watch two European soccer teams lock horns in a UEFA Tournament of Champions that has absolutely no significant economic benefit to our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. This is the sort of pathological “Neocolonialist Mentality” that President Kwame Nkrumah often spoke about as Ghana’s first postcolonial premier.

Hopefully, with the landmark and auspicious election of Dr. Bawumia, come December 2024, much of such scandalous leadership incompetence and morally and politically inexcusable profligacy would decidedly become a relic of the past. You see, Dear Reader, Ghana is in dire need of leaders who have absolutely no qualms or hesitancy, given a choice between personal addiction to school-boyish entertainment and the studious attention to the very basic and the indispensable needs of their people. Even as Mr. Afenyo-Markin eloquently testified on the august floor of Ghana’s Parliament, recently, Vice-President Bawumia represents the future and the progressive interests and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people, even as former President Dramani Mahama could be aptly envisaged to represent the thoroughly repudiated and long-discarded neocolonialist past.

In the memorable words of President Nkrumah and the Founding Fathers and Mothers of the Proto-Convention People’s Party (CPP Proper), “Forward Ever, Backwards Never!” Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama clearly appreciates this fact in toto, which is why over the course of at least a couple of years now, the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress has been desperately campaigning for voters to give him another clearly undeserved opportunity to return to Jubilee House, so that he could correct his legion past mistakes. What the foregoing means, Dear Reader, is that even the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress is unspeakably ashamed of his own performance track record in the four-and-half years that he held the reins of governance as substantive Chief Executive of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. And yet, the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, has absolutely no qualms in so brazenly belittling the intelligence of Ghanaian voters and citizens.

So, the logical question to ask of the unindicted Atta-Mills’ “Atetenkorona” is why would the former National Democratic Congress-sponsored Member of Parliament for the West-Gonja Constituency, in the Savannah “Accelerated Development” Region, of SADA Infamy, would so insolently presume the collective needs, interests and the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people to be secondary to his patently parochial and self-glorifying desire of remodeling himself and his rather morally and politically bankrupt agenda of being at all costs crowned Kwame Nkrumah-the-Second or The Osagyefo’s Avatar? Tofiakwa! Nyame Mpannwu Obronsamso!!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
November 23, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]