Mahama’s Baleful Wind of Change

Four days later, it clearly appears that President-Elect John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama’s Second Mistakes-Correcting Tenure is ominously shaping up to be even far worse than his previous ragtag regime, as his ardent and fanatical supporters take to the streets on the rampage all over the country in unspeakable acts of thuggery and vandalism and other forms of rampaging, the likes of which have not been witnessed in 67 years of Postcolonial Ghanaian History and Political Culture, that is, since the seismic, cataclysmic and the apocalyptic overthrow of the Kwame Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) government, on February 24, 1966.

It is a strikingly unmistakable portent of what lies in store for the overwhelming majority of Ghana’s electorate and the citizenry once the now-President-Elect John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama officially assumes the democratic reins of governance on January 7, 2025. It is almost certain that the critical mass of implacably disgruntled Ghanaian voters who offered the Mahama-led main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) their mandate out of sheer anger and frustration have begun regretting the egregious error of their decision.

But , of course, like all wrongful decisions taken out of sheer anger, such regret comes as damn too late and irreversible. Indeed, even as we “speak,” both the local Ghanaian media and the international press have been reporting the apparent unleashing of an unprecedented open season of looting, mayhem and the wanton destruction of both State and Private Properties all across the country, none of which surprises this author in the least bit, being that not very long ago, while on an electioneering-campaign stumps in the Akufo-Addo-trimmed Volta Region, the then-Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying) Dramani Mahama angrily and boastfully declared to the entire nation that the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress was the most violent political establishment in Ghana’s postcolonial history.

Now, with the Global Media’s reportage about the fact that supporters and sympathizers of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress are embarked on a bestial, indiscriminate and a relentless onslaught of wantonly destructive proportions of properties and looting spree all across the length and the breadth of the country, finally, the proverbial chickens - or “Nkokonketenkete” - may be coming home to roost, in the memorable words of the legendary African American Human and Civil Rights Activist and Advocate, to wit, Muslim Minister Malcolm X Malik Al-Shabazz (1925-1965).

What the preceding really means, unless Yours Truly is grossly mistaken, is that President-Elect John “Ouagadougou Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama is likely to be bogged down with the self-wrought nuisance business of having to promptly repair and repay the damage and the mayhem caused the nation by his deliberately and strategically prompted party footsoldiers, as they are popularly known and called. Which, of course, in essence means that Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja has unarguably far more on his plate, by way of “mistakes to be corrected” than he ever bargained for. And for a handsome portion of such wanton acts of unspeakable criminality and unpardonable depravity, Ghanaians have the so-called National Information Officer of the National Democratic Congress, namely, Mr. Samuel “Sammy” Gyamfi, to thank.

For those of our readers who may have so curiously soon forgotten or had not studiously paid attention to the same, it was “The Honorable” Mr. Sammy Gyamfi, the NDC’s Orwellian equivalent of Mr. Squealer of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” who churlishly and mischievously sicced party thugs and hatchet men and women on the staff of the Jean Adukwei Mensa-Chaired Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) at all the Ballot-Collating Centers throughout the country, almost immediately after the official deadline for the closure of polling had elapsed.

In what well appears to have been a coded signal to these party thugs, hacks and hirelings, Mr. Gyamfi ensured that a critical mass of ballot boxes being conveyed from polling stations to the various collation centers would not arrive at their officially designated locations and destinations. If such an order, very likely carried out on behalf of the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, namely, “Lt-Col.” Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, the recent superannuated graduate of the Senior-Staff College of the Ghana Armed Forces, was not unmistakably tantamount to criminal ballot-rigging, one must be at a complete loss precisely what else it was.

You see, a Presidential Candidate who had “emphatically” and “convincingly” clinched an electoral victory would not have rallied his supporters to swamp the various collation centers around the country to ensure that a critical mass and a remarkable percentage of ballot boxes being transported from the various polling stations to the respective collation centers around the country, would be criminally intercepted and tampered with or, worse yet, be totally destroyed before they could arrive at their designated destinations. Now, the newly elected President Mahama has a prime opportunity to significantly raise the monetary amounts of the compensation packages awarded to the families of the victims of the 2020 Techiman-South Constituency polling tragedy, by the outgoing Akufo-Addo government, to the desired monetary values and magnitudes.

On the latter count, though, fairly equal blame for the open season of looting and mayhem raging throughout the country must be apportioned to the Heads of the various branches of our National Security System or Apparatus, who flatly and adamantly refused and/or failed to heed the legion calls from this writer and many others to ensure that an adequate number of personnel from the Ghana Armed Forces had been stationed at each and every tinderbox polling station in the country, against vehement protestations from key National Democratic Congress operatives like Chairman Asiedu-Nketia and Dr. Valerie Sawyerr, to name only the most conspicuously obvious.

It tragically appears as if the leadership of the pathologically complacent New Patriotic Party is forever doomed to repeat their own past mistakes over and over and over again ad-nauseam. And so they will continue to suffer one ignominy after another, until the proper lessons are learned and the requisite collectively self-protective measures have been studiously imbibed and proactively executed. This is where matters presently stand in Fourth-Republican Ghana. Too late, the Phalarope, our profound apologies to celebrated White, South-African Novelist, Alan Paton (1903-1988).

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
December 11, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]