Why Samira Bawumia Will Be Ghana’s Worst First Lady

If the adage "behind every successful man, there is a woman" is accurate, then Samira Bawumia, the wife of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, may have contributed significantly to her husband's incompetence and failure. Had she been a hard worker, she would have encouraged and supported her husband in becoming a dynamic vice president, but instead, Bawumia broke all of his promises to Ghanaians, including the construction of toilets in every community across the country.

A married woman is always very close to her husband, with honesty, faithfulness, and caring for the family, which is one of the reasons that if something awful occurs to him, his wife is the first person the police question as a suspect. Thus, if Samira and Mahamudu have been married for so long and the woman is unaware that her husband is a liar, then she is also a dishonest person. Therefore, why can any sane Ghanaian have faith in a first lady who has supported her husband's lies and deception?

I have always been proud of Ghanaians because they can withstand the most difficult hardships in life, and more significantly, the love and friendly relationship between Muslims and Christians in Ghana is something wonderful that alone makes Ghana a great country. For these reasons, I believe Ghanaians have allowed Samira Bawumia to run for office to serve Ghana. However, in my opinion, she doesn’t deserve to be encouraged or entertained on any political platform to campaign.

While campaigning for the NPP or her husband to be vice president in October 2016, Samira Bawumia, like all other NPP politicians, neglected to inform Ghanaians of what her husband would accomplish if elected. Rather, she attacked John Mahama to begin her campaign. "Mahama will not only be remembered as one of the most corrupt and incompetent presidents to have ever led Ghana but also as a useless president who has failed to improve the lives of Ghanaians," the woman said.

Ghanaians can comprehend why politics is sometimes said to be a dirty game. I know deep down that Samira can never look into her husband's eyes and call him incompetent and worthless, but she did say that to Mahama, a former leader who has demonstrated that having a real impact in politics is more significant than boasting. Amid a GHC 120 billion public debt, Mahama constructed numerous projects throughout the country while leaving uncompleted clinics, low-income housing, and schools.

Greatly influenced by her husband's and Akufo Addo's false promises, which included fighting corruption, illegal mining, and money laundering, and moving forward with projects like "No village in Ghana will have a challenge with toilet and water provision within 2 years of the NPP," Samira Bwumia took to social media once more to declare that she has no regrets about calling John Dramani Mahama incompetent in the run-up to the historic 2016 general election.

Taking into account Bawumia's greatest failure and his involvement in financial crimes, such as the willful dissolution of eight financial institutions to give former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta's Data Bank a monopoly and his cooperation with Ernest Addison, the governor of the Bank of Ghana, to print new currency three times without parliamentary approval, which caused the economy, businesses, and investments to collapse, why should any serious Ghanaian give support to Samira and her husband?

Bawumia failed to deliver on many promises in addition to the toilet projects, which included providing businesses with a cost-effective and dependable energy mix, aggressively pursuing industrialization and value addition to agriculture, developing interconnected roads, railways, ports, and harbors, building 570 dams, providing hospitals in districts, and lowering the corporate tax rate from 25% to 20%. Are Ghanaians going to pay attention to this couple?

It seems to me sometimes that many NPP politicians, including Jean Mensa, consider Ghanaians fools because I find it incomprehensible that Samira Bawumia will publicly declare that "no one is more committed to an inclusive society than Bawumia" despite Mahamudu Bawumia's numerous financial crimes and his failure to work diligently toward the economy and currency as promised, which has caused the economy to collapse beyond repair amid a staggering national debt of GHC 763 billion.

To what extent does Samira Bawumia respect Ghanaians? If she told Ghanaians that she "doesn't regret labeling Mahama incompetent and corrupt" despite all of his accomplishments, why is she so sure that the country's citizens will embrace his message when her husband's leadership has resulted in eight unnecessary years of suffering, despair, insecurity, and death? In addition to ruining Ghana, the Akufo Addo-Bawumia administration has killed and embezzled pensioners’ money.

As a Ghanaian, I can attest to the contributions and services of first ladies Madam Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and Madam Lordina Mahama. The latter, while in opposition, was able to construct a maternity and children's hospital for the people of Bole. Since I don't see anything positive about Samira Bawumia, it suggests that she will be the worst first lady in Ghana’s political history.