Selecting a Running-Mate from Asante Region Was only Strategically Savvy

I had a vested interest in Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia’s selection of his Running-Mate for the 2024 Presidential Election because on August 2, 2018, when I paid a visit to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his capacious and well-appointed office suite at Jubilee House, I underscored the overriding significance of his need to gun for a second presidential term, if the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice was really serious about having Vice-President Bawumia succeed him, in order to move the country rapid up the global development index or ladder as well as preserve the social-intervention legacy of both Nana Akufo-Addo and the institutional establishment of the ruling New Patriotic Party. I also passionately lamented that so grossly incompetent had the previous eight years of National Democratic Congress misrule been that it was likely to take at least 20 more years for Ghana to get back on track to the level of development it deserved to have already achieved.

You see, I had initially suggested in several opinion pieces and columns that I had composed and published on various Ghanaian media portals, that at his very advanced age and with his most formidable achievements and legacy almost effectively and firmly established beyond any iota or shadow of the proverbial reasonable doubt, the scion of the Ofori-Atta Clan and the late Chief Justice Edward Akufo-Addo had absolutely nothing left on his plate or in his portfolio to prove to anybody right here on Earth, least of all to the man who had been working sleeplessly around the clock to ensure that his long-cherished dream of succeeding to the Presidency never came to pass or fruition. And by the way, that inveterate and implacable archnemesis was the very same person who had aspersed his former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice with the felonious crime of having torched the Accra Ridge residence of the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings.

Anyway, I calmly and solemnly looked straight into the large eyeballs of the man who, together with the Oxbridge-educated native of Walewale, in the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, had gunned for the Presidency for three consecutive electoral seasons and, almost in whispers and under my breath, confided to the legendary Leprechaun of Kyebi and Akyem-Abomosu, that gunning for a second presidential term would enable “Bawumia-The-Outsider” to build up a formidable portfolio to enable him to effectively parry off such snooty Dynastic-Entitlement Addicts as the pathologically megalomaniacal Mr. Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, a morbidly overindulged and inordinately pampered narcissist who was, besides his age, absolutely no intellectual and professional peer or classmate of the Simon Fraser University, Canada, doctoral-degree holder and crackerjack economist and team leader of the landmark Cedi Redenomination Exercise during the tenure of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

He may not have been a card-carrying member of the Great Elephant Party, but Dr. Bawumia had decently acquitted himself and literally earned his keep by the time that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo savvily and opportunely tapped the Mamprusi prince and patrician as his “Presidential Driver’s Mate.” He had, indeed, earned his keep, as many an educated American is wont to say, and did not need any reams of apologies to justify his placement onto the second tier or undercard of the topmost ticket of the 2008, 2012 and the 2016 New Patriotic Party’s Presidential Election Tickets. It was his very strategically savvy decision to gun for a second presidential term that enabled Vice-President Bawumia to build his formidable portfolio as Mr. Digitalization or Mr. Digital Technology.

Now, in terms of ownership of any remarkable national development policy initiative, it is in the area of Digital Technology that the Buckingham, UK, University graduate has distinguished himself as the most active and progressive Vice-President of Fourth-Republican Ghana. Recently, there was this cynical talk about Vice-President Bawumia’s having decided to selectively take credit for some progressive government policy initiatives, while flatly denying culpability for some failed ones. Which, as usual, set Yours Truly laughing almost out of control because the glaringly devious supposition here, of course, was that, somehow, it was Dr. Bawumia who had ultimate responsibility for the fortunes and the misfortunes of the achievements and the failures of the Akufo-Addo Administration, rather than the man who was statutorily in charge of the government and the country and at whose pleasure all cabinet and executive appointees, including the Vice-President, served.

Those of us who have studiously followed government policy initiatives and the practical execution of the same, are well aware of the fact that while, indeed, he has been, by and large, afforded hitherto historically unprecedented space or room to significantly contribute to the governance of the country, there are also members of the Akufo-Addo Cabinet, including some with no officially designated portfolios who have been allowed to exert undue influence on the governance of the country, largely based on the strength of the consanguineal relationship that these nondescript actors have with the Chief Executive of State, and not necessarily based on professional merit. We have witnessed this unsavory aspect of Fourth Republican Ghanaian Political Culture since 1993.

There are also those of our leaders who have deliberately and cavalierly “baptized” official corruption in the name of Adam and Eve; those who have preferred the use of paid private detectives to distract public attention from their own thievish tendencies; and those who have pretended that the criminal cannibalization of state-owned properties was a sheer matter of “Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice” of the kind self-righteously preached and religiously practiced by the entire leadership of the National Democratic Congress. And those who simply copycatted their predecessors in the name of political incorruptibility.

But that Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia was obligated to select his Running-Mate from the Asante Region was a simple matter of course, judging by the fact of our democratic political culture being a sheer game of numbers. Now, what cannot be reasonably disputed regards the choice of which ethnic Asante candidate or Running-Mate candidacy prospect was the most strategically appealing and far more likely than all the rest to rake in the desired numbers in the polling booth.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

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