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Mahama Equals Empty Words and Promises, Bawa Mogtari

Feature Article Mahama Equals Empty Words and Promises, Bawa Mogtari
TUE, 09 APR 2024

What words or electioneering-campaign promise could be more vacuous or substantively devoid of any practical significance than the 2012 promise by a then-Interim President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama to retrieve every pesewa of the Alfred Agbesi Woyome-fronted Mega-Heist entailing the humongous sum of GH₡51.2 million (Ghana Cedis, so-called) which, recently, Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, Ghana’s longest-serving, Rawlings-appointed Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice, told an indescribably stunned nation had actually been criminally extorted from Ghanaian taxpayers by a newly elected President John Evans Atta-Mills and the latter’s first Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu (See “2024 Harmattan School: Accountable Governance, Violent Extremism And 2024 Elections" Modernghana.com 2/9/24).

The foregoing observation of a forensically incontrovertible fact, of course, not only makes Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying) Dramani Mahama a leader of “Empty Words” in the manner recently described by the baby-pumping Mahama cousin, Joyce Bawa Mogtari, the so-called Special Aide to the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, it also makes the twice-defeated, one-term former President and the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) a pathological and a congenital liar in ways that cannot be said of the widely presumed next President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia (See “'Leaders should lead by example, not by empty words' — Mahama's aide slams Bawumia” Modernghana.com 4/1/24).

Now, we all perfectly know for an unarguable fact that a leader of empty words is one who could not turn the lights on, literally speaking, for more than 24 Minutes but, yet, has the effrontery to promise Ghanaian citizens and voters a 24-Hour Economy, in the highly unlikely event of him being returned to Jubilee House, so that he could, once again, rob Ghanaian taxpayers raw to the bone and the marrow by opening another kleptocratic sluice gate in the name of his infamous ethno-regional boondoggle that was the Mahama-hatched Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Gravy Train.

In short, not only is Candidate Mahama a man of empty words in ways that Little Cousin Joyce Bawa Mogtari may not like to hear, Kwame Gonja, whom the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings incessantly and relentlessly described as the most thoroughgoing corrupt postcolonial Ghanaian leader, for want of a more appropriate descriptive, vis-à-vis the latter word, is a copycat and an unspeakably poor imitation of a vintage statesman who abjectly lacks the requisite skills and the talent to govern a major globally respected country like our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

John Mahama also woefully lacks problem-solving skills: remember the infamous “Shit-Bomber” disdainfully telling Ghanaian citizens and entrepreneurs to figure out their own “creative means” of working around the rhythmless vagaries of Dumsor, instead of doing some serious crunch-time thinking with his double-salary drawing cabinet appointees in a bid to finding an intelligent and a constructive real-time solution to this age-old problem? As well, don’t we all remember how Kwame Gonja custom-tailored a Power Ministry for Dr. Kwabena Donkor, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Pru-East Constituency, in the Akufo-Addo-created Bono-East Region, without Dr. Donkor’s submission of the results of any feasibility studies on how to effectively resolve this age-old canker, not even the shadowy or the sketchy semblance of a proposal?

Now, what kind of a veritably clinical idiot of a leader is this that Little or Baby Cousin Bawa Mogtari would eagerly have reimposed on Ghanaian citizens for the second time around? Even more scandalous, Candidate-General Mahama would have Ghanaian voters unwisely buy into his foremost electioneering-campaign platform plank of being returned to Jubilee House, so that: “I Can Correct My Past Mistakes.” Does the foregoing quote sound like the words of an intelligent and a responsible leader who respects the integrity of the humanity and the dignity of his fellow Ghanaian citizens, let alone an exemplary leader worthy of our trust and confidence and the emulation of our children and grandchildren, than the pathological narcissist that he inescapably is?

Now, talking about the fact of whether Ghanaian citizens and voters could trust the word of Vice-President Bawumia when it comes to the burning up of confiscated Changfang Excavators used by Galamsey miners to lay waste to our precious waterbodies and environmental and forestry resources, maybe what the so-called Mahama Special Aide ought to be telling Ghanaians, if, indeed, Mrs. Bawa Mogtari really wants to make the thoroughly spent and jaded political force that is Candidate-General Mahama relevant to Ghanaian citizens and voters, once again, she had better tell us precisely what environmentally progressive steps it was that an extant incumbent President Mahama had taken to effectively and significantly, to speak less or a diddly little about the laudable, arrest the epic existential menace that is the predatory Galamsey industry.

You see, we have on readily accessible record a recently defeated Candidate Mahama, in the wake of the 2016 Presidential Election, solemnly promising some illegal small-scale miners that one of his first official duties and pronouncements, in the highly unlikely event of him being returned to Jubilee House, would be to grant these criminal nation wreckers carte-blanche access to the mineral-rich lands and riverbeds of the country. Even more telling of his criminally irresponsible leadership temperament and character, in one of the dozens of videoclips widely publicized on Tik Tok and other social media websites and forums, a seismically defeated Candidate Mahama is seen and heard promising these illegal small-scale miners that all convicted and legally sentenced and incarcerated Galamsyers would be granted wholesale or blanket and unconditional amnesty with 24 Hours of his return to Jubilee House. Clearly, this is what Candidate Mahama’s 24-Hour Economy is undoubtedly about. But, of course, this is not what forward-looking and progressive-thinking Ghanaians are looking for in their next leader.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
April 1, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, © 2024

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, taught Print Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City, for more than 20 years. He is also a former Book Review Editor of The New York Amsterdam News.. More He holds Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) in English, Communications and Africana Studies from The City College of New York of The City University of New York, where he was named a Ford Foundation Undergraduate Fellow and the first recipient of the John J. Reyne Artistic Achievement Award in English Poetry (Creative Writing) in 1988.

The author was part of the "socially revolutionary" team of undergraduate journalists at City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY), who won First-Prize certificates for Best Community Reporting from the Columbia University School of Journalism, for three consecutive years, from 1988 to 1990.

Born April 8, 1963, in Ghana; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Kwame (an educator) and Dorothy (maiden name, Sintim) Okoampa-Ahoofe; children: Abena Aninwaa, Kwame III. Ethnicity: "African." Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1990; Temple University, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1998. Politics: Independent. Religion: "Christian—Ecumenist." Hobbies and other interests: Political philosophy.

CAREER: Ghana National Cultural Center, Kumasi, poet, 1979–84; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, worked as instructor in English; Technical Career Institutes, New York, NY, instructor in English, 1991–94; Indiana State University, Terre Haute, instructor in history, 1994–95; Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY, member of English faculty. Participant in World Bank African "Brain-Gain" pilot project.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, African Studies Association, Community College Humanities Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Essay award, Nassau Review, 1999.
Column: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

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