The Choice of Vice-President Bawumia as Akufo-Addo Running-Mate Was not Smooth, Prof. Yankah

If Prof. Kwesi Yankah would be true to himself, the retired Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon, would have to admit to the unarguable fact that there was absolutely nothing “smooth” about both the selection and the reception by the top leadership of the then-ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), at least the virulently anti-Akufo-Addo Faction of the New Patriotic Party, of then-Candidate Mahamudu Bawumia, at the time a Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana, as the 2008 Presidential Running-Mate of then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. So, it is rather risibly amnesiac on his part for the immediate younger brother of the equally renowned and influential Mr. Kojo Yankah to be plaintively or bitterly claiming that the selection of a Running-Mate only recently hit an unexpected snag or became unusually rough with the arrival of the turn of Candidate Bawumia, the 2024 Presidential Nominee of the New Patriotic Party, to selecting his Running-Mate for the watershed 2024 General Election and, in particular, the 2024 Presidential Election.

In the opinion of the former Minister-of-State for Tertiary Education, there seems to have suddenly erupted some rancorous fissures among the top leadership of the New Patriotic Party that appear to have convulsed an otherwise smooth-sailing established protocol of the selection of a Running-Mate in the proverbial Elephant Party (See “NPP Running-Mate: Deep Down, Bawumia Cannot Be a Happy Man; No Freedom – Prof. Kwesi Yankah” Modernghana.com 6/19/24). There is a mocking irony in the fact of Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia’s being labeled as a “party outsider” in the wake of his opportune selection by the former John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice as his 2008 Running-Mate and, thereafter, his 2012 and 2016 and 2020 Presidential Running-Mate consecutively.

A mocking irony because as Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana, it was Dr. Bawumia, under the genius tutelage of Dr. Paul Acquah, the extant substantive Governor of the Bank of Ghana, who led the team of first-rate economists that redenominated the veritable junk that was the cedi bequeathed the incoming Agyekum-Kufuor Administration by the departing Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led ragtag regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Nobody at the time complained about the use of a “political outsider” by the Agyekum-Kufuor government to rationalize and stabilize Ghana’s economy.

As I vividly recall, absolutely nobody made it easy or “happy” for the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-South. Nonetheless, Nana Akufo-Addo, ever the unflappable politician that he has always been, decided that come hell or highwater, he would not be dissuaded from having the young and generously talented and forward-looking man from Walewale, in the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, as his Presidential Running-Mate.

For that matter, as I vividly recall, the pair would come under relentless attack from the Agyekum-Kufuor and the Mpiani Faction of the New Patriotic Party. In the wake of the Anas Aremeyaw Anas documentary exposé, titled “Number 12,” we had a former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor rolling the drums of the politics of personal destruction by asking Ghanaians from all walks of life and ideological shades and suasions to swarm the various movie theaters where “Number 12” was being screened, in order to hear the Almighty Mr. Kwasi Nyantakyi, the internationally disgraced former President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), authoritatively testify to the fact of the newly elected President Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Bawumia’s being the most corrupt payola guzzlers of Ghana’s postcolonial history, a venom-laden narrative that would have made even the late President Rawlings squirm in his seat and wonder whatever happened to the long-established accolade of his former protégé and “Shit-Bombing” Communications Minister as the most thoroughgoing corrupt postcolonial Ghanaian leader.

For reasons that are neither farfetched nor curiously outlandish, in the widely unpopular selection of his grandnephew as the 2024 Presidential Running-Mate of a widely alleged payola-guzzling Dr. Bawumia, not a whimper of protestation has been heard from the Agyekum-Kufuor and the Mpiani Faction of the New Patriotic Party. Our elders have a saying that: “If a painful sore is on the skin or the body of your neighbor, it just as well must be on a tree.” Which simply means that even if he is not a “happy man” for selecting Dr. Opoku-Prempeh as his Running-Mate, at least Candidate Bawumia has inoculated himself against the otherwise near-certain possibility of the patently pedestrian politics of vendetta and personal destruction.

It has often been said that: “Birds of same feathers flock together.” So, maybe the man who once insisted that “corruption is as natural and ancient as Adam and Eve” has, suddenly and/or serendipitously come to a sobering realization of the fact that ultimately, what is good for a payola-guzzling Mahamudu “Issaka?” Bawumia is equally good for Osei-Tutu Agyeman-Prempeh “The Bofro-Eater.” On a sidenote, however, I just wanted to also add that, I had initially been literarily counseling Nana Akufo-Addo to stay in Jubilee House for only one term or a Leap Year. But I suddenly had a change of mind on August 2, 2018, when the female career Presidential Secretary regally announced my entrance into Nana Akufo-Addo’s plush and capacious Presidential Office Suite.

That was when I steadily and studiously looked the Leprechaun of Kyebi and Akyem-Abomosu straight in the eye and knowingly and deliberately, in spite of myself, declared to him as follows: “I think Otchere-Darko had it right, recently, when he told the media that you intended to stay in office for a second term.” And then I added, almost as an afterthought: “If you want Bawumia to succeed you and not be chewed to pulp by megalomaniacal political piranhas like Alan Kyerematen. Plus, I firmly believe that staying in office for a second term is apt to enable Vice-President Bawumia to build a formidable portfolio to ensure that none of the dynastic-minded Kumasi Boys will be able to push him to the curb.” The rest, as they say, is in Walewale.

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