Don’t Mind this Compulsive Liar: Why Did John Mahama Not Resolve the Protracted, Internecine Yendi Chieftaincy Feud?

By the time of this writing and press preparation, it ought to have become crystal clear to a desperate twice-rejected, one-term former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama that he cannot run away from his recent past leadership record of gross disrespect and abject disregard for the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and the electorate, especially when it comes to making promises that he is well aware that he either woefully lacks the requisite leadership knowledge and competence and/or the skills to realize or successfully bring to fruition, or that he simply has absolutely no intention of fulfilling, such as his 2012 Presidential-Electioneering Campaign Promise to retrieve each and every cedi and/or pesewa stolen from our National Treasury by Chief National Democratic Congress’ Underwriter, Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome.

The Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, is a compulsive and a pathological liar and an opportunistic con-man and scam-artist par-excellence who has absolutely no peers among the vanguard ranks of Ghana’s major politicians. It was therefore absolutely not without any good reason that the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, described his former protege and “Shit-Bombing” Communications Minister as the most thoroughgoing corrupt Ghanaian leader who had made him regret having summarily executed the Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong-led members of the Supreme Military Council ( SMC-1 & 2) for crimes which, in retrospect, in the authoritative opinion of the former Flt-Lt. Rawlings made the slain Generals and the Senior Officers of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) seem like innocent and newly-born babies in diapers.

There can be absolutely no gainsaying that the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-commandeered National Democratic Congress has absolutely and unabashedly no interest in settling the age-old bloody Bawku Conflict. Candidate Mahama may actually be smack behind the recent flaring up of this internecine and seemingly intractable conflict, at least for the simple reason of his gaping failure to use the Ayariga Brothers, a major twin-factor behind the Bawku Conflict and, one may even be apt to suggest, prime beneficiaries of the so-called Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Gravy Train, in particular Mr. Mahama Ayariga, who has been in lockstep with Okogufuo Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja as one of the latter’s State-Capture Looting Brigadiers and Money Bags.

Recently, a professionally and a pathologically litigious partially Harvard Graduate Law School-Trained Mahama Ayariga has been pouring petroleum onto the Bawku Conflict by suggesting the eternal existential incompatibility of some of the warring factions, and therefore the imperative need for splitting up the sparsely populated Bawku Municipality into at least two administrative regions. In short, to the at once elitist and populist leadership of the National Democratic Congress, Ghanaians do not have genius problem solvers like President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia but, rather, problem-compounders and complicators, sinisterly and devilishly hoping that they could then use this ancient and primitive tactic of Divide-and-Conquer gimmickry to attain undeserved power, so that they could callously and recklessly wreak more “Cash-and-Carry” socioeconomic and Dumsor havoc on the Ghanaian people.

You see, when Candidate Mahama cheaply and scandalously promises that he intends to make the definitive resolution of the national-development retrograding Bawku Conflict one of his topmost priorities, he needs to be reminded about what he told the traditional Supreme Overlord of Dagbon, Ya-Naa Abubakari, II, after President Akufo-Addo had prevailed on The Asantehene, His Royal Majesty, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, and some other prominent and influential Ghanaian traditional chieftains, including the Yagbonwura of Candidate Mahama’s own Gonja Kingdom or State, to resolve the age-old Dagbon or Yendi Chieftaincy Crisis or Feud.

For those of our readers who may not readily remember, the then Candidate Mahama, in the runup to the 2020 Presidential Election, rudely and enviously told Ya-Naa Abubakari, II, that it was Kwame Gonja’s own “Inscrutable Divine Providence” who had surreptitiously descended from Heaven down to Earth and to the troubled City of Yendi to resolve the bloody internecine conflict between the Abudus and the Andanis. It is therefore absolutely nothing short of inexcusable absurdity for a politician who believes that it is an “Inscrutable Divine Providence” who is in the routine habit of descending to Earth from Heaven to resolve existential and internecine conflicts among humanity, to be promising to make the Bawku Conflict a foremost priority in the highly unlikely event of him being returned to Jubilee House in January 2025.

If so, then why would the twice-rejected, one-term former President John “Brazil Embraer Scamming” Dramani Mahama be telling members and attendees of the NDC Governance Forum that he himself, rather than his “Inscrutable Divine Providence,” intends to prioritize the definitive resolution of the Bawku Conflict in the offing? (See “Resolving Bawku conflict will be one of my priorities— Mahama assures” Modernghana.com 11/1/24).

As well, come to think of the fact that the man who thoroughly bankrupted the former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established, low-premium National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which the then Candidates Atta-Mills and Mahama publicly pooh-poohed as a practical impossibility, should now be promising to create a more comprehensive healthcare system for Ghanaians, should Candidate Mahama be inadvisably returned to Jubilee House for a second, nonconsecutive presidential term. Now, who looks more like a prime candidate for a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric treatment?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

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