Musah Superior Should Stop Kibitzing and Let President Mahama Call His Own Shots

He has already been there and done that, as Americans and, in particular, New Yorkers are fond of saying, having also been effectively shunted onto the margins of the political opposition for some 8 of the longest years in his otherwise quite remarkable political career. So, it is rather condescendingly unbecoming of him for Mr. Iddrisu Musah - aka Musah Superior - the Akufo-Addo-appointed former Metropolitan Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale, to presume that he could cavalierly lecture or decide for the twice, nonconsecutively reelected Bole-Bamboi native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, which of the ministerial cabinet portfolios Mr. Mahama needs to either scrap or retain, in the wake of his official announcement to the nation that he intends to reduce the number of the statutorily stipulated 30 cabinet portfolios to 23, as a fiscally disciplinary measure or means of running a much “leaner government” than had been run by both his immediate successor and his immediate predecessor, namely, former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Thus far, Mr. Mahama has marked down the National Security and the Sanitation ministries for elimination, which makes perfect sense, being that the Ministry of National Security can be readily subsumed under both the Ministries of the Interior and Defense and be managed even far more efficiently than it was before; even more efficiently still, the Ministry of Sanitation, as has been the case in the past, can be far more effectively managed by the Ministry of Health. As well, as we have recently noticed, at least with the previous Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the micro-compartmentalization and the proliferation of cabinet portfolios had also created an unsavory avenue for rank official corruption and the wanton creaming and the fiscal exploitation of Ghanaian taxpayers, as was recently witnessed in the globally richotted Cecilia Abena Dapaah self-incriminating mega-theft scandal that was shamelessly and publicly and unconscionably defended by then-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the nationally infamous Archbishop of Official Corruption from Akyem-Abomosu and Kyebi (See “ Scraping National Security, Sanitation ministries wrong – Musah Superior slams Mahama” Modernghana.com 1/29/25).

Likewise, expanding the Ministry of Local Government to include the Ministries of Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs is a very savvy and politically the most most strategic thing to do. Significantly, it is critics and predictably disingenuous New Patriotic Party stalwarts like the former Tamale Mayor who may very well be making it extremely difficult for their party to be returned to power in the offing. You see, defending the epically failed status quo is highly unlikely to endear the politically mischievous likes of Messrs. Iddrisu Musah and Andrew “Andy” Appiah-Kubi to progressive-thinking and civically responsible Ghanaian citizens and voters.

As well, contrary to what Mr. Musah Superior would have the rest of us believe, especially a politically “Born Again” Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja, an Agribusiness Department would function much better and more efficiently under the Ministry of Trade and Industry than under even “a vibrant Agriculture Ministry,” for the simple reason that the Ministry of Agriculture would be much better off being fully focused on the development of food production in all of its assortment of forms and manifestations, including research and the promotion of new food production techniques, such as but not limited to staple crop farming, fishing and fishery, dairy and husbandry and poultry agriculture, while the marketing aspects of these products and the capital inputs required to maximize such production are more efficiently harnessed under the auspices of the Agribusiness Management Division of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

Any dastardly and disingenuous attempt to sabotage such a progressive policy initiative must be roundly rejected and greeted with the utmost scorn that it unarguably deserves. As well, such patently frivolous tax abolition measures as the E-Levy, Betting Tax and the COVID-19 Levy ought not to become a major focus of the Mahama 2.0 Government. They are a peevish distraction meant to sidetrack its agenda by “an emphatically defeated” covey of status-quo charlatans who are naturally traumatized and are in a deep funk of denial about the new political reality on the ground, as it were.

Scientists around the globe continue to alert us to the fact that we are not out of the woods yet, when it comes to the serious and the still deadly after-effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Which means that critical resources are still needed to fight the long-term after-effects and the deleterious impact of COVID-19, especially coming at a time when the right-wing and the Neo-Fascist Trump Government is hellbent on completely defunding all sources of supplementary material assistance to many a Third-World country, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, so-called, such as has been steadily, even if woefully inadequately, provided by such reputable and long-established agencies as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for nearly a century now.

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