Mahama Can Never Become a Region-Creating Akufo-Addo in a Million Years, Bawku Naba!!!

Calling on the twice-defeated former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama to create a new region out of the inter-ethnically volatile municipality of Bawku, in the Upper-East Region, as the Paramount Chief of Bawku, Naba Asigri Azoka, II, is widely reported to have done recently, was pretty much like asking a stark and butt-naked and theft-prone man for a brand-new Batakari or a tuxedo suit (See “Bawku Naba appeals for new region during Mahama's visit” Modernghana.com 8/4/24).

But what got my proverbial horse even more than any other aspect of such a patently superfluous demand was the Bawku Naba’s rather comical contention that “In creating a new region, we are not just looking at political boundaries but the potential for accelerated development and better governance.” Now, I really don’t know his level of formal education – not that it really matters anyhow – but the limpid fact of the matter ought to have informed Naba Asigri Abugrago Azoka, II, that even if any of our currently actively engaged leaders and/or politicians, that is, besides the lame-duck President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was truly capable of accelerating the degree and the level of the development of the perennially conflict-wracked Bawku Municipality, it is definitely not the hopelessly payola-prone Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress.

Rather, it is the time-tested and administratively and empirically proven Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, the Buckingham and Oxford universities-educated first-rate economist, who also presently doubles as the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), the man who has also been affectionately dubbed as the Paramount Chief of Digitization or the Digital Revolution in the country, who matchlessly qualifies for such an intellectually exacting policy measure or initiative. Indeed, if Bawku Naba Azoka, II, had paid studious attention during the course of the 8 years during which the late President John Evans Atta-Mills and former President Mahama, in particular the latter, were at the helm of our national affairs, absolutely no worthwhile development occurred in the entire country, including the Akufo-Addo-copycatted Mahama-established Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), which almost exclusively benefited a close circle of kleptocratic and kleptomaniacal Mahama-associated profiteers called the Agambillas and the Abuga Peles, to name only a couple of the professional thieves among the vanguard ranks of the National Democratic Congress that readily come to mind.

It was also the very first time in Ghana’s postcolonial history that the Board-of-Directors of any national-development agency or authority had been exclusively composed of the members of one ethno-regionally descended or originated cabal of Ghanaian citizens. You can call it the “Northern Tribal Fascist Para-Governmental Alliance” of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress. You see, under the operation of the so-called Savannah Accelerated Development Authority, the West-Gonja native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, only astronomically accelerated the magnitude of the Cedi and the Dollar currency notes in the wallets and the bank accounts of these “Eto People,” that is, “Circumcised Barbarians” like the infamous Media Shit-Bomber himself.

We are also well aware of not only the Guinea-Fowl-Flying SADA Project but even more significantly, the fact that many an average electoral district or constituency in the so-called Five Northern Regions is, almost to each and every district or constituency, far less densely populated than their counterparts in the Akan-dominated Southern Half of the country. Which essentially means that the 6 constituencies that Naba Azoka, II, claims to be occupied by Bawku, may very well be far less or more sparsely populated than, say, Dormaa Ahenkro, which contains more than ONE-MILLION People, or the Bono regional capital of Sunyani, with approximately ONE-POINT-THREE-MILLION People! In what ways or upon what basis does the Bawku Naba so curiously and scandalously arrive at this statistically rather insulting comparison between Bawku and the entirety of the Bono Region?

Ultimately, what the people of Bawku direly need is not a new region but civilized and morally and culturally and intellectually expansive and socially responsible leaders and politicians, who are more studiously focused on human-resource development, than cheaply, divisively and savagely instigating their people to pick up machetes or cutlasses, tomahawks and guns and literally tear at one another’s throats like bunches of wild animals. The unvarnished truth must be told and be told boldly and fearlessly without favor. The fact of the matter is that even if each and every household in Bawku, which has a human population of approximately 120,000 (One-Hundred-and-Twenty-Thousand) – it could be slightly higher, that is, if by the end of the composition of this column, the Ayariga Brothers and their kinsmen and in-laws have not started chopping each other’s heads and throats off, once again.

And just what sort of healthcare improvement services is the Bawku Naba talking about here? The John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which Yagbonwura Okogufuo Kwame Gonja literally decommissioned and thoroughly bankrupted? Come on, we need some serious thinking here! But for the acute and the astute leadership of President Akufo-Addo and, in particular, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, we would still be talking about the veritable and the apocalyptic killing field that was the Bawku Municipality under the ragtag Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress. The people of Bawku and Ghanaian voters should bear the foregoing pointedly in mind, as we head towards the December 7, 2024 General Election.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
August 4, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]