Mahama Is His Own Worst Enemy

As Charismatic Pastor Mensa Otabil intimated recently, it is very crystal clear that our Christian God may have a piddling little to absolutely nothing to do with the conduct of the election of our leaders in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. Otherwise, our “Inscrutable Divine Providence” - apologies to Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja - would unarguably have to be confronted with the indescribably painful fact that S/he has been making damn too many mistakes in the selection and the election of our leaders these days.

That was the thought that flashed through my mind, when I read the news report about the Victory Speech or Address by the former President and, presently, Ghana’s President-Elect, namely, Mr. John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, in which the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, smugly and self-righteously, as well as self-delusively, declared as follows: “I thank God for preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies. And for anointing my head with oil and making my cup run over.”

Now, such blasphemous self-adulation did not impress Yours Truly in the least bit. After all, wasn’t the officially designated author of the Psalms of David not globally known to be both an unconscionable adulterer and a murderer of Uriah, the very military Lieutenant Commander whose wife, Bathsheba, he had so bestially violated? Which also left one wondering whether the former “Shit-Bombing” Communications Minister for the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings was also not envisaging himself as a King David Incarnate. And by the way, Yours Truly also listened to a portion of the televised version of Yagonwura Kwame Gonja’s so-called Victory Address.

I don’t know that strategically siccing your supporters on the staff of the Jean Adukwei Mensa-Chaired Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) was a Divine Act of any Inscrutable Providence. Anyway, we are also informed by the reporter that this most common passage from the Bible is extracted from Psalm 23 Verse 5 or Psalm 23:5. Not that knowing the source of the latter quote really matters anyhow. The truth of the matter, though, is that our President-Elect may have legions of enemies, both within and outside the geopolitical confines of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana because the twice-rejected, one-term former President has been nonconsecutively reelected by Ghanaian voters precisely because they had been implacably disappointed with the dismal performance record of the former National Democratic Congress-sponsored Member of Parliament for the West-Gonja Constituency, in the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, between 2013 and 2017, when he ran the country with his kleptocratic and state-capturing kinsmen and women and his cronies of the National Democratic Congress, and ended up literally blighting and blanketing the country with the economically regressive pall of Dumsor, the perennially erratic supply of energy or electricity, that effectively collapsed more than half of all Ghanaian business enterprises, both privately and publicly owned (See “'I thank God for preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies' – Mahama” Modernghana.com 12/9/24).

It goes without saying that President-Elect John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama is his own worst enemy in-toto! For example, in the recent past, he has virulently accused The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, of lying to a Plenary Session of the New York City-Headquartered United Nations General Assembly, because Barima Kwaku Duah, as The Asantehene was known in his pre-regius life, had dared inform the members of the globally renowned and respected diplomatic body that his institutional relevance as a postcolonial chieftain or monarch, included having successfully prevailed upon a deeply reluctant extant President Mahama to promptly, humbly and graciously concede defeat to the man who had epically and seismically defeated him in the 2016 Presidential Election, to wit, the proverbial Leprechaun of Akyem-Abomosu and Kyebi, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Prior to the latter moment of his Waterloo, as it were, the now-President-Elect John “Akokonketenkete” Dramani Mahama had described both his immediate successor and predecessor as an insufferable megalomaniac who was using all sorts of means, short of staging a military putsch against Kwame Gonja, who felt hermetically and peremptorily entitled to the Presidency. So, rather than risibly hoodwinking himself and his most ardent and fanatical supporters into believing that his most recent electoral victory was tantamount to a triumph over his enemies, the former Atta-Mills’ Arch-Lieutenant would be much and far better off doing some serious thinking and sober soul-searching and deep reflection on his own egregious public and private misbehavior as his worst or Number One Enemy.

You see, haughtily and disdainfully telling the then-Candidates Akufo-Addo and Mahamudu Bawumia to “Shut Up!” and stop criticizing his abjectly poor management of the country because neither of these two of his most formidable political opponents had ever acceded to the Presidency via the popular franchise, was not exactly the most effective and constructive approach to forging amity or friendship with his political and ideological opponents. Which is also why Mr. Mahama ought to be profusely thanking Vice-President Bawumia for promptly conceding defeat in the 2024 Presidential Election.

In all likelihood, if the metaphorical tables had turned obversely or conversely, with the Electoral Commission officially declaring Vice-President Bawumia as the winner of the 2024 Presidential Election, believe me, Dear Reader, we would still be waiting for a decisively trounced Candidate Mahama to concede defeat, as had been the case with the 2020 Presidential Election. And curiously, his niggardly concession of defeat in 2016 also came with the rather bizarre demand for the officially designated residence of all Vice-Presidents of Ghana to be offered to him as a gift for having “dutifully” complied with the admonishment of some influential and prominent Ghanaian citizens, such as the legendary and the immortalized Mr. Kofi “Busumuru” Annan, Indigenous Continental Africa’s first elected Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Which is precisely why I do not for even a split-second believe that a second Mahama government or administration is apt to be fiscally and managerially more competent or disciplined than the present outgoing government of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party. Which is also why, significantly and paradoxically, President-Elect Mahama is smack on target for commending Vice-President Bawumia “for his statesmanship in conceding defeat long before the announcement of the results by the Electoral Commission.” This is the kind of rarefied and civilized exhibition of diplomatic statesmanship that Mr. Mahama is widely known to woefully lack, and that which makes Vice-President Bawumia a Nobel Peace Prize-qualified Candidate in the offing.

The unspeakable level of violence and vandalism wreaked by some members of the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-led National Democratic Congress, in the wake of the announcement by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission of the electoral victory of the latter party and its nauseatingly recycled Serial and Dynastic Presidential Candidate, offers little hope for more peaceful days ahead. I have no proverbial rose in this race venturing into the next four years, although I must keep hoping that the significant material progress achieved by the twice, consecutively elected Akufo-Addo government of the New Patriotic Party would, at the very least, be studiously maintained by the incoming Second Mahama Government. I am, however, not holding my breath though.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
December 9, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]