Trust Me, Mahama and “Vision” Are Mortal Enemies

The twice-defeated, one-term former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, may have rather farcically convinced himself that his obviously hired propaganda touts like the one who recently wrote and published a largely incoherent article captioned “Mahama's vision on agriculture and agribusiness” (Modernghana.com 6/18/24) are really not helping their paymaster and 2024 Presidential Racehorse, as they seem to have adamantly convinced themselves that they are. You see, the unarguable fact of the matter is that jaded hacks like Mr. Anthony Obeng Afrane are merely making matters worse for the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

They are actually complicating matters for the Bole-Bamboi, native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, because what these propaganda shills and touts really need to be highlighting in their propaganda fare, glibly and shamelessly passed off as opinion pieces, are the achievements of the man the late Founding-Father of whose own political party publicly and bitterly described as the most grossly incompetent and corrupt postcolonial Ghanaian leader if, indeed, any such tangible and readily accessible proofs of such achievements really exists. You see, any leader or politician who has any remarkable performance track record of achievements would not be desperately pleading with voters to return him to Jubilee House, so “he could correct his past mistakes.” He would, instead, be proudly showcasing his achievements as the sole reason why he deserves to be returned to the highest seat of governance in the land.

Instead, we have Mr. Obeng Afrane, for just one of the most strikingly and annoyingly obvious examples, writing practically and politically untenable “Position Papers” of the sort that can only capture the imagination of registered and eligible Ghanaian voters who have absolutely no knowledge or inkling about the abjectly poor performance of Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama in the four-and-half-year period that the former Rawlings-appointed Communications Minister was the substantive President of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. You see, propaganda touts like Mr. Obeng Afrane have a tough sell convincing critically thinking Ghanaian citizens and voters that, indeed, Candidate Mahama is any remarkably endowed with some weird phenomenon called “Vision” on the state of Ghana’s agriculture and agribusiness when, as we all vividly and painfully recall, the then-President Mahama shamefully and embarrassingly failed to even show up in Bolgatanga, or some such regional capital located in one of the so-called Five Northern Regions, for the Annual National Farmers’ Day Festivities in the heated runup to the 2016 General Election.

This was the same man who had informed the nation earlier on at the end of the Year 2000, or thereabouts, that he was returning to his hometown of Bole-Bamboi to fully immerse himself in commercial farming or agriculture. That was well before the future President John Evans Atta-Mills’ ill-fated decision to handpick Kwame Gonja as his Running-Mate for the 2008 Presidential Election, a decision that was fiercely but abortively contested by Chairman Rawlings and his wife Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings. It would eventually turn out that Prof. Mills, as the former Rawlings’ Arch-Lieutenant was also popularly and affectionately known and called, was actually setting himself up for both his most epic and royal betrayal, as well as physical and political suicide, in retrospect.

In other words, to be really or adequately convincing, jaded propaganda hacks and touts like Mr. Obeng Afrane need to critically and specifically highlight any significant and exemplary agricultural and agribusiness achievements notched by Yagbonwura Okogufuo Kwame Gonja, to demonstrably authenticate such patently vacuous electioneering-campaign promises. So far, none of these Mahama propaganda touts have proven themselves to be even half worth the level and magnitude of attention afforded them by the media. In the predictable process, nearly each and every one of these Mahama touts and propagandists has ended up insufferably and unspeakably insulting the intelligence of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people.

Even more damning for any critically thinking Ghanaian citizen or well-meaning reader or listener is the fact that Candidate Mahama has absolutely no worthwhile or exemplary achievement in the critical socioeconomic sphere of agribusiness. You see, what is being so cavalierly touted by Mr. Obeng Afrane as Candidate Mahama’s agribusiness know-how is absolutely nothing short of the latter subject’s decidedly trite and humdrum bragging about the tonnage of raw cocoa beans annually exported abroad under his watch or tenure. If the kleptocratic and the kleptomaniacal State-Capture leadership of the Cash-and-Carry and pathologically Anti-Fee-Free Senior High, Technical, Vocational STEM Curricula School System National Democratic Congress really had any remarkable appreciation for gainful agricultural and agribusiness policy initiative and agenda, they would rather be talking about an Integrated Industrial System that also entailed heavy capital investment in the full-scale manufacturing of cocoa-based products and byproducts, which stands to exponentially boost the capacity and the level of employment for the country’s teeming youths of both the unemployed and the woefully underemployed.

Plus, if you also believe that a Fee-Free Basic High School, Technical, Vocational and STEM Curriculum and Education System is a complete waste of our scarce and limited national fiscal resources, you also obviously cannot genuinely believe in the gainful employment of our youths, contrary to what the leadership of the Mahama- and the John “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-cannibalized institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress would have the rest of us believe.

*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 18, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]