A Guileless Open Response to the President’s Open Question to Ghanaians

Your Excellency, President Mahama; I learnt they also call you Kofi Dubai? Well I will not be dragged into this 'name calling' although in my opinion it suits you well. Mr. President, seeing you on TV this Tuesday I have no basis to 'dock' any doubt of your good health unless you are under some invisible-zealots to please Ghanaians at the expense of your health like it once happened in 'Sikaman'; where a certain ailing head of state was forced to shove at an airport. This I know you remember very well unless as Ghanaian as we all are, our memory has run shorter beyond your claim. If not then even in our short memory this should be quite fresh. So I do not appear to be the one spewing headlines. One thing I also observed is how you are aging faster than you wish and how your grey hair is multiplying faster than the dollar is running from the cedi. The latter which you even alluded makes me wonder whether you will still ride on the back of youthfulness in this year's elections since you seem aged than your main contender of the 'opana-chaired' party. But this not to say I am too naïve to be surprised if you go ahead with this cheap-propaganda. If for nothing at all I have been Ghanaian enough to know that you find a street named 'Kokonte' creative. An assertion that makes me understand why your government will spend GH ₵ 3.6m to brand buses; hold YEA account to ransom of some whopping GH ₵1m all on travels; and spend thousands of dollars on some software. Like I posted on facebook, to chalk such feet takes creativity if not magic. To not take much from you this early, I will cut short the pleasantries and spare you much of the usual protocol which Dr. Walter Roodney describes as a 'sheer bourgeois subjectivism'. Better still I do not need your able communicators to tell me you've had a tough day standing on your feet for over two hours and the need to spare you some boredom. That granted Your Excellency, you still have to spare me some time to make my motive clear. I am not by this being impertinent. I would never do that. Slender your presidency for what!! Not even when you keep harbouring corrupt officials; waste public funds on judgment debts; shoots the nation's debt to opipipipiiii. Never!!!! Not even when you condemn me to darkness and kill me with mediocrity. Not even with your dead-goat syndrome. Not even when you describe my daily intake of 'ice water' from my second fridge and the presence of my 'atsi kor pow' television which is not even connected to any 'satellite', good living and better days in Ghana. I know you are only being a normal African president who is damn desperate to win power than to win poverty. Even if by virtue of my Ghanaian nationality I am guaranteed that right amidst the hardships of your competency and the sacrifices you have admonished me to make, my faith will not permit me to do so. Like you I am a Christian and I have my faith based respect for those in authority in one piece. Where we may differ is the rest we find for our faith. Yours appeals to hosting low-risk detainees and presiding over corruption. Mr. President why don't you go and open the gates of our prisons for all prisoners to walk out freely and have a second shot at life since it is 'biblical' and you are a friend of prisoners. As you mentioned you've made history by being the first president to visit the prisons. Why don't you complete it and make another record, Mr. President? You will forever be remembered to have emptied our prisons and saved us some tax money since these terror suspects are not even fetching us any money. In any case the risk Ghanaian prisoners pose when freed you and I know will be far lower than that of the two former Giitmoo bay detainees combined even at it low state. It is also not a criticism. I am in no class with you Mr. President. The last time I checked not even a certain good doctor of economics, a former deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana and 'certain' running mate of the presidential candidate of some hijacked largest opposition party, had a clue of the presidency to question your competence. How much more an ordinarily young Ghanaian who is still learning to construct a simple sentence without missing a tense or committing some grammatical error. A young man who lost at his first attempt to win his peoples vote to represent them at the assembly. Your Excellency, If not for your own words that ''Fear is a powerful motivator'', and that ''our commitment as to who we are and our principles is tested by terrorism'' I won't have risked writing to you. Knowing well what the consequences may likely be. With my motive well established Mr. President, I proceed by commending you for two bold interventions of yours. First is the scrapping of the allowances for teacher trainees which the opana-chaired party is playing chess with it and like always say it will serve them right of they leave this ground holy. Second is how you held the truth to it throat and adjudged your government and for that matter your presidency as the most insulted in the history of Ghana. But even before you are swayed by these confessions let me be quick to add that they are not enough to win you my vote. My vote is highly fortified and expensive and it won't take your populist gestures like you dashing a 3-bedroom house to a heroic taxi driver nor a cheap propaganda like you cataloguing your unfounded achievements in a certain accounting to the people book neither is it in the walk through the streets of Ho with your fat-stricken, stomach -building appointees. Perhaps like you said may be, just may, my illiterate great grandfather in the village may be the one to buy into this mischief. Again Your Excellency, like you were bold enough to confess, I will also be frank enough to admit that your government and for that matter your presidency has been the one to have insulted and mocked Ghanaians the most in the annals of 'Sikaman'. Sometimes I wonder if like a certain decorated journalist wanted to know if what keeps you awake at night is the thinking that there is no Ghanaian with a common-sense just like most of your appointees. If that is not it then how can you Mr. President, appeal to our compassion to host suspected terrorists when the very state which did them the wrong as we being made to believe has by legislation made the country a no-go for them in righting their wrong as lawyer Amaliba asserts. When your government can't even watch over risk free public funds entrusted in your care. Like one high profile minister of God humoured, Mr. President, which of these two police officers will watch over them. The one in the U.S with all the sophiscated equipments and training and is always on a constant watch yet watched the world trade centre brought down to ashes or the one here in Ghana who sleeps on duty, takes the one cedi and shoots sporadically at an innocent bank customer and goes back to duty with the same gun? Or perhaps the kind of 'jakron' citizen vigilante like in the tax driver you have awarded. Don't want to think you considering Anas for some work? Then you ask and I quote “…where is our Christian passion or where is our faith based compassion on people that after being detained for 14 years without trial, we can't find it or hearts to give these people at least a chance to restart their lives.” Like seriously Mr. President? Anyway since I did not see you laughing after the question I believe I have been too dump to even ask you another question and so I will right this wrong by jumping quickly to respond to your question. And here is it Your Excellency: look to your appointees and you will discover where our compassion is and has been and understand why we want giitmoo bay detainees returned even if with zero-risk. Or better still redirect the question to your appointees not we Ghanaians. I bet you they are in the best position to answer and make things clearer to you. After all we are not the ones stealing from state-coffers, strangling YEA, collapsing NHIS blotting contract fees and feeding on the vulnerable. Ask your appointees where their compassion is as they keep creating, looting and sharing; rape the state and grapple over its resources as if it was betrothed to them while we make sacrifices; and right there you find the Ghanaian compassion. You will find out that the nation you have transformed is one left only with peace and this we cannot trade for anything. Not even with our priceless compassion and hospitality. And lest I forget Mr. President, let it be known to a certain appointee of yours that not all of us Ghanaians are twin mothers to not be threatened with a big dick'. Sincerely Speaking, Mr. President I Am Ghanaian And I Am Dead Frightened Who Knows, I May BeWriting Just Across the House Next To The Secret Giitmoo Bay In Ghana.