Go Way You, Kwame Gonja! - Part 1

Everybody must know by now that the flood of promises made by the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), namely, Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (STX Scammer) Dramani Mahama, is not worth the breath with which they are spoken; neither are such promises worth the very pieces of paper or computer screen or hard-drive bite or memory bank in which they are stored. But what especially needs to be poignantly highlighted and indelibly underscored here is that for the credibility of such promises as “leveraging AI Technology” in order to promptly and thoroughly stem the predatory tide and the ecologically destructive trail of activities of Galamsey, that is, illegal small-scale mining, on the present and the future long-term survival of the country, ought to, perforce, be juxtaposed against the past and the present pronouncements on Galamsey activities in the country and, in particular, vis-à-vis any practically progressive and environmentally conservative measures and policy initiatives that have actually been initiated and/or implemented by Candidate Mahama to significantly arrest the deleterious impact of the Galamsey industry in the recent past (See “I will fight galamsey with AI — Mahama ” Modernghana.com 5/15/24).

There is a complex concatenation or network of epic leadership failure that points to the fact that the former Rawlings-appointed Communications Minister has simply chosen to literally blow with the prevailing political winds, where vote-seeking and cheap political-points-scoring pronouncements are concerned. You see, where the critical application or the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology in the resolution of major socioeconomic and existential problems of Ghanaian citizens is concerned, the one-term, twice-defeated former President has absolutely no significantly verifiable performance track record to boast of, much less any talk of even being practically and concretely aware of the existence of any such thing as AI Technology. Put in plain and simple language, it appears that Candidate Mahama is only trying to vacuously talk a good game, as it were, because the man just heard such formidable political opponents of his as Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia and Education Minister Yaw Osei-Adutwum talk about the socioeconomically productive use of AI Technology, which has resonated with the people such that a politically desperate and megalomaniacal Candidate Mahama sees no other viable alternative but to sing along – that is “lip-synch” – with the aforementioned foremost Ghanaian statesmen and leaders of our present generation.

And yes, the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, has absolutely no clue and is decidedly “voiceless” when it comes to the prompt, deft and the visionary application of AI Technology for the rapid and the indispensable and the massive material development of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. He is also a national-development regressing wrecking-ball who has recently taken his demolition squad with him – among them, a bootlicking Mr. Felix Ofosu-Kwakye, the former Communications Minister – to seek to seriously and completely undermine the progress, security and the wellbeing of our Senior High School Students. Just the other day, for example, in the wake of the release of the results of the WASSCE exit exams, that indicated an unprecedentedly significant improvement in the academic and the vocational achievements of our youths in at least a decade, Candidate Mahama quickly took to the national and the global airwaves and social media to snidely and disdainfully accuse these hardworking, intelligent and generously talented young men and women of having conspired and colluded with their teachers and officials at the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to royally and criminally cheat their way out of their exit exams.

Candidate Mahama also cynically claimed that such “marvelous” exit exams success would not be believed by anybody familiar with the performance level of Ghanaian High School Students going back the last decade and half. He also took issue with the very long-overdue and academically progressive and laudable decision by Education Minister Yaw Osei-Adutwum to have each and every Senior High School and Vocational Student issued with an academically and vocationally programmed laptop, as a means of ensuring that these near-future leaders of government and industry would be afforded the direly needed fighting chance on the global market and supermarket.

You see, the closest use of AI Technology that as substantive President of Ghana Mr. Mahama came to was to have the late former Vice-President Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur crisscross the country distributing buses to high schools, largely located in the electoral strongholds of the National Democratic Congress, mainly in the Northern and the Volta regions, in the runup to the 2016 General Election. This is a man and a Fourth-Republican leader who has done more to exacerbate the already insufferable predatory activities of illegal small-scale mining than any other Fourth Republican Ghanaian leader.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
May 15, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]