A Female Vice President Cannot Cleanse the Toxicity You Keep Appointing

To the President of the Republic of Ghana, to the Ministers whose portfolios give you authority over boards and state institutions, to the leadership of Parliament’s Appointments Committee that is constitutionally mandated to vet the ethical suitability of public figures, to the governing councils of our universities that have the responsibility to protect students, and to the party power brokers and advisers who influence these decisions from the shadows, this must be said without restraint.

You approved, endorsed, defended, and facilitated the appointments of Kwasi Kyei Darkwah, Ransford Gyampo, and Felix Ofosu Kwakye. You did this knowingly, intentionally, and with full awareness of the controversies, ethical concerns, and public discomfort tied to each of these men. You did not make these decisions because you lacked alternatives. You made them because preserving male influence has become more important to you than preserving women’s trust in their own country.

You chose to elevate men whose names have been tied to serious public criticism about their unethical activities toward women, and you acted as if those concerns were irrelevant. You behaved as though the young women who watched these cases unfold no longer matter. You sent a clear message that the dignity and safety of Ghanaian women can be overshadowed by political calculations, personal alliances, and male camaraderie. You restored these men not because the nation asked for them, but because you insisted that their presence was more valuable than the trust of women who must navigate schools, workplaces, and public offices under the shadow of male impunity.

Your appointment of Kwasi Kyei Darkwah shows a political instinct to protect the comfort of men who are well known, well connected, and well defended. The uproar around him was not imaginary. Women across this country felt the tremors of that moment. Yet you behaved as if controversy evaporates when power decides it has lasted long enough. You acted as though your approval could overwrite the fears and frustrations of countless young women who watched that saga and learned how easily their vulnerability is dismissed.

Your elevation of Ransford Gyampo carries consequences you cannot pretend to ignore. The uproar in the public space, the questions raised about student vulnerability and authority, the ethical discomfort shared by many women in academia, all of these mattered. They demanded caution, responsibility, and integrity. Instead, you treated them as background noise. You pushed him upward anyway, sending a signal to every female student in this nation that the institution will always find its way back to protecting the man, even when the optics alone demand restraint.

Your embrace of Felix Ofosu Kwakye completes the picture of a leadership culture that has stopped pretending to care about the moral weight of its decisions. You brushed aside the scandal surrounding him with speed that betrays your priorities. You acted as though women are expected to simply forget what they saw, what they heard, and what that entire incident communicated about the treatment of female vulnerability in Ghana’s political ecosystem.

You hide behind the symbolism of a female Vice President while stripping that symbolism of any substantive meaning. You place her in front of cameras, at the top of speeches, and in the rhetoric of international respectability, yet you undermine her with every appointment that drags Ghana backward. Her presence does not cleanse your decisions. Her visibility does not neutralize your disregard for women. Her achievement does not compensate for the appointments you continue to make that spit in the face of women who expect ethical governance.

Young women in high schools see you. They watch the cycle, the allegations, the uproar, the national debate, the political silence, and then the unethical activities of powerful men normalized again. They learn that complaining is dangerous and reporting is pointless. University students see you. They watch men regain influence without institutional reflection, and they understand that their fear is an acceptable sacrifice. Women in workplaces see you. They learn that leadership will accommodate problematic men if those men serve a political purpose.

You run a state that pretends to protect women while openly recycling men who represent everything women fear in systems built to weaken them. You cannot talk of development while doing this. You cannot speak of gender equality while reproducing a leadership culture that rewards controversy and punishes vulnerability. You cannot call yourself democratic while undermining half of your citizenry.

If you want to lead a nation that deserves respect, you must confront what you have created. You must acknowledge the harm of your decisions, the disdain embedded in your priorities, and the damage you have inflicted on women’s trust in their own country. Your appointments are not administrative acts. They are political declarations. And right now, your declaration is that the protection of men outweighs the dignity of women.

Until you change that, every claim you make about progress is empty. Every speech about equality is performative. Every celebration of representation is counterfeit. A nation cannot move forward while dragging misogyny behind it, and women cannot trust a political order that has shown them repeatedly that their safety is expendable in the name of male convenience.

By: David Asante Ansong, Doctoral Researcher,

Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, United States

By: David Asante Ansong