Just as President “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Colluded with Afari-Gyan and Charlotte Osei to Rig Elections 2012 and 2016?

Among the “Akan-Kabonga” or “Kɔtebɔtɔ” majority populace of Ghana, at least in the publicly expressed contemptuous opinion of the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, there is a common and wise saying that: “If the frog or the toad emerges from the bed of a river and informs you that King Crocodile has just joined his ancestors,” you, a terrestrial human, dare not challenge this amphibiously ubiquitous critter and messenger.

That was exactly the thought that flashed through or across the mind of Sincerely Yours, when he recently chanced across a news story captioned “Mahama Accuses EC of Colluding with NPP to Rig 2024 Election” Modernghana.com 6/4/24). In the news story, the globally infamous “Shit-Bomber” who, as Communications Minister in the National Democratic Congress’ government of the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, was widely reportedly in the routine habit of flooding the premises of privately owned newspaper establishments known not to blindly or docilely toe the line of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) with raw sewage or untreated human waste, is alleged to have recently accused the Jean Adukwei Mensa-Chaired Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of colluding to rig the upcoming 2024 General Election in favor of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) because, in the wake of the largely NDC-instigated violent and bloody clashes that inflected the recent Limited Voters’ Registration Exercise, conducted all across the country, the IEC had wisely decided to expressly prohibit agents of all political parties, including the New Patriotic Party, from delegating teams of monitors and observers to participate in the ongoing Voter Transfer Exercise taking place across the length and the breadth of the country.

Predictably, a politically agitated and desperate Candidate John “Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying” Dramani Mahama imputed this downright civically constructive and morally responsible decision by the IEC’s administrators to imply that the Commission was smack in cahoots with the Mahamudu Bawumia-led New Patriotic Party to rig the watershed 2024 General Election. Now, this accusation is very interesting because it is rather the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress that has an established track record of routinely rigging elections in the country.

For example, in the wake of the 2012 defeat of then Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, presently the lame-duck President Akufo-Addo, the extant General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress, namely, Mr. Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, publicly told the host of an Accra FM Radio Station that Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan had egregiously and criminally called the results of that watershed election in favor of a then-Interim President John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama, because polling agents and observers and monitors assigned by both the corporate leadership of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party and Candidate Akufo-Addo had not been vigilant enough to ensure that the clear and obvious loser of the 2012 Presidential Election would not be declared winner by a thoroughgoing corrupt and a grossly incompetent Mahama-decorated Dr. Afari-Gyan.

And then just recently, it came to light, via the first-hand and the authoritative testimonies of former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor and Retired Commissioner of Police, Mr. Nathan Kofi Boakye, severally, that but for the personal and the opportune intervention of His Majesty, The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, the extant Mahama-appointed Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, namely, Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, could very well have, once again, egregiously and criminally declared the results of the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of the decisive or the landslide loser, namely, an Incumbent President Mahama. Now, given the preceding unimpeachably authoritative first-hand testimonies by Messrs. Agyekum-Kufuor and Kofi Boakye, there is absolutely no gainsaying the fact that if any of the leaderships of the country’s two major political parties could be credibly accused of being relatively more prone to rigging any election or electoral process in the country, it is definitely the corporate operatives of the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-led National Democratic Congress.

Matters are given further boost and credence by the fact that even as recently as May of last year, 2023, the entire nation awoke to a scandalous but hardly startling news, when Ghanaians were shamelessly informed by the Kingmakers and the Queenmakers of the National Democratic Congress, that, indeed, a deliberate effort had been made to rig up the National Delegate Voters’ Register of the latter antidemocratic institutional establishment so that a fiercely challenged and grossly incompetent Candidate Mahama could, once again, as occurred in 2016, run effectively unopposed against a far more formidable Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, the former Atta-Mills-appointed Finance Minister and, well before that, the Rawlings-appointed Governor of the Bank of Ghana.

At any rate, as of this writing, whatever lame excuse Candidate Mahama might hitherto have had, by way of impugning the credibility of the 2024 Presidential Election, had completely come apart, as Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, unarguably Ghana’s best qualified and most efficient Chief Returning Officer in history, had decided to allow agents and monitors of all legitimately registered political parties in the country to fully participate in the ongoing Voter Transfer Exercise. Now, what the “Mistakes Correcting” Candidate Mahama really needs to worry himself silly about, presently, is his woeful and abject lack of any enviable performance track record upon which to predicate his decidedly nonstarter of “an-almost-over” 2024 Presidential-Electioneering Campaign Season.

You see, short of clinical dementia, anybody who really believes that a Mahama-led National Democratic Congress has any fighting chance in the 2024 Presidential Election, or even the 2024 Parliamentary Election, must obviously be living in the proverbial Fool’s Paradise. I sincerely don’t know of any bona fide Ghanaian citizens and voters who are of the conviction that the long-threatened withdrawal of the Akufo-Addo-implemented Fee-Free Senior High, Vocational, Technical and the STEM Curricula System of Public Education in the country by Candidate-General John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama is a progressive national-development agenda.

As well, I know absolutely nobody, including a significant majority of registered members, supporters and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress who sincerely believe that the threatened summary collapse or liquidation of the Agyekum-Kufuor-implemented National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is their perfect idea of the ideal Universal Healthcare System direly needed by our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. Fat Chance, Kwame Gonja!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
June 5, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]