Mahama Embezzled Agyekum-Kufuor’s Funding for the NHIS

He claims to be a Christian and an honest one at that. Still, one wonders what brand of Christianity it is that the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, subscribes to or believes in. You see, just four days ago, as of this writing, that is, the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama was widely reported to have told a group of church leaders in Ghana’s industrial port city of Tema, in the Greater-Accra Region, that the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which the former thoroughly bankrupted and had to put Mr. Sylvester Mensah, the Executive-Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), the Mahama-appointed manager of the NHIS, under house arrest, typical scapegoat fashion, in the runup to the 2016 Presidential Election, had “almost collapsed” because the present Akufo-Addo Administration “is not paying any money into the scheme” (See “'All NHIS gives you is a hospital folder' — Mahama” Modernghana.com 3/13/24).

Now, these words are actually coming from the political con-artist who claims to have lost both the 2016 and the 2020 Presidential Elections because he had been too honest with Ghanaian voters by informing them about the grim realities of our beloved nation’s economic situation. Obviously, this congenital and pathological liar was counting on the short memories of the aforementioned Christian Church Leaders; otherwise, he would have almost immediately choked on his own words and kola nut-saturated saliva, once whatever else he had that was left of his guilty conscience kicked in and vengefully reminded the self-proclaimed “Dead Goat” that but for the $2 billion (USD) that was needlessly sunk into the Mahama-embezzled National Health Insurance Scheme by a newly elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, there would exist absolutely no low-premium NHIS program to presently talk about.

Now, isn’t it rather ironic for the man who literally ground Ghana’s economy to a screeching halt and effectively aground and saddled Ghanaian taxpayers with billions of dollars in Judgment-Debt Arrears, to be bragging about having rapidly driven the nation unprecedentedly high up the Economic-Development Highway, only to have the man who seismically defeated him both the 2016 and the 2020 Presidential Elections suddenly put Ghana’s Economic-Development Vehicle into “Reverse Gear”?

Indeed, at the time that he put Mr. Sylvester Mensah under house arrest and had the latter’s bank accounts frozen and his passports confiscated, widespread rumors had it that Mr. Mensah was being so publicly humiliated and vilified because the NHIA’s Executive-Director had flatly and adamantly refused to siphon a humongous amount of funding specially earmarked for the operation of the NHIS into the 2016 John Dramani Mahama Presidential-Election Campaign.

The one most interesting and significant fact to note here is that the alleged culprit of the misappropriation or embezzler of the NHIS was quietly let off the hook and never brought to trial. This is what the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress ought to have “honestly” explained to his audience of Tema Township Christian Religious Leaders, and not the absolutely unnecessary and intellectually insulting fact of whether the NHIS program under the present Akufo-Addo Administration had been farcically and fiscally reduced to the mere handing down or the distribution of empty hospital folders to seriously ill patients in dire need of prompt medical attention and treatment.

Of course, it was an insult to the intelligence of his audience because the lamebrained presumption here was that, somehow, none of these Church Leaders and Elders had had any occasion to use the NHIS-issued low-premium health insurance cards. You see, under the administratively clueless ragtag Mills-Mahama regime of the National Democratic Congress, and well before the latter regime, the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress, the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens had absolutely no access to any worthwhile health insurance facility for them to think of even going to the hospital for medical attention, let alone treatment.

This was the Social Darwinian Era of the Survival-of-the-Fittest and the Cash-and-Carry “Deathcare Policy,” which simply condemned the lumpen-poor and the destitute of Ghanaian society to eternal damnation for one’s lack of the ability to pay upfront for one’s medical services or treatment. It is also very obvious that the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Gang has absolutely no respect or value for human life and absolutely nothing worthwhile and/or meaningful to offer the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian electorate and the citizenry, thus their desperate attempt to scandalously reduce the relatively far more progressive national development track record of the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party to their own grossly administratively incompetent level.

Which is also why a politically cynical and clueless Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama would make such rather morally appalling and intellectually obtuse comments as the following: “It looks like we are coming back to the ‘Cash-and-Carry’ days” of which socioeconomically depraved regime, Candidate Mahama was The Chief Advocate. It is also crystal clear that these are the words of a morally reprehensible leader who does not want Ghanaians to progress or significantly improve the quality of our living standards. This is a battle that the incurable nation-wrecking leadership of the thoroughgoing corrupt National Democratic Congress cannot win.

Recently, for example, Yagbonwura Okogufuo Kwame Gonja was widely reported to be jubilating over what he claimed to be the sudden and the strategically auspicious return of Dumsor with a vengeance, a situation that he gaily deemed to have put both the Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia-led New Patriotic Party and the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress effectively on par in the runup to the 2024 Presidential Election. Now, Dear Reader, who is really driving the economic V-8 of Ghana in Reverse Gear? How morbidly and farcically pathetic!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
March 17, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]