“As-salamu Alaykum”, Vice President Dr Alhaji Mahammudu Bawumia

It is only normal, and a feel of pride as a discerning Ghanaian, to write not only to congratulate our current Vice President of Ghana, Dr Alhaji Mahammudu Bawumia on his successful electioneering campaign and election to the second highest office in Ghana, but also to wish him “As-salamu alaykum, a greeting in Arabic that means "peace be upon you".

Shall God bless him for a job well done! However, the greatest job lies ahead of him to be accomplished. It is how to get Ghana out of the economic ditch the outgone President Mahama and his cabal of NDC greedy bastards, courtesy of former President Rawlings, have plunged Ghana into.

Successfully winning the election, wrenching power out of the hands of President Mahama and his bunch of the Ghanaian version of the “Arabian Ali Baba and his forty thieves” is with all intents and purposes, the first phase of resolving the teeming socio-economic problems presently faced by Ghanaians. The actual difficult problems of finding the needed resources, the right calibre of experts and honest people to assist you and your boss, His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo deliver on your promises to the fullest expectation of the Ghanaian populace are waiting to be addressed.

There is no doubt about it that you, Dr Bawumia, possess the expertise needed in this critical period in the life of Ghana to help towards extricating Ghanaians from the joblessness, poverty and the total dejection they currently find themselves in as brought to bear upon them by the incompetence, brazen love of corruption, practice of selective justice, and disrespect for the governed by the recently outgone President Mahama and his NDC-led government.

As a known gentleman, highly educated and honest as you are to your boss, His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, your government can hopefully deliver Ghanaians from the economic hardships they are compelled by circumstances beyond their control to painfully deal with.

It will take expertise strategically implemented, honesty, farsightedness, dynamism and dedication to duty to be of true or selfless service to one’s country and people to solve the problems facing Ghanaians today.

As the President is nationally known to be incorruptible and was trained throughout his upbringing by his parents of cherished memory to respect the laws of the land, so do I hope and conclude from your public life to be also.

Now, as clean and serious as both of you are with resolute determination to deliver on your campaign promises to the expectation and admiration of the Ghanaian public, I shall request of you the following, or suggest or advice you to do as follows.

1. Select people with not only the requisite higher paper qualifications which are a must, but also, with the needed expertise and honesty to help you to do the job. As it is in the Ghanaian Akan proverb, “It does not take the hands of a single person alone to cover the eyes of God” (“baako nsa nso Onyame ani kata”), thus, “two heads are better than one”

2. Discipline must start from within your government. Make sure the appointed people to assist you govern the nation are reliable, incorruptible, respectable and respectful. They must not be arrogant towards the President and, or his Vice President. They must respect the Ghanaian public and treat them with dignity, realising that without the electorates, they could not have been in government today.

3. The appointed persons must have in their minds to have come to serve Ghanaians but not to be served as it has contrarily always been the mind-set of the Ghanaian or the African politician hence always seeking to acquire illegal wealth overnight to be able to command or control people because of their wealth and power.

4. As incorruptible as the President is known to be, he will not take a pesewa which is not genuinely due to him from the public purse. I know or suppose you are in the same bracket. If that is the case, then make sure nobody immediately under you steals to enrich themselves. Those under the people under you will continue with the same mentality until it comes down to the ordinary Ghanaian in the street to ensure that he/she does not practise corruption to enrich themselves. That is the only way to uproot or curtail corruption, the bane of the economic development of Ghana, from the country.

5. As charity begins at home, so should disciplining Ghanaians to eschew acts of corruption start from within your government?

It is when we do as suggested above, that the dream of NPP staying in power for long, to guarantee President Nana Akufo-Addo two 4-year terms in office his health and God permitting, grant Dr Bawumia two 4-year terms in office as future President with Hon. Allan “Cash” Kwadwo Kyeremateng also having his turn at the presidency become a dream come true, thus, a possibility. Anything contrary to that will cut our dreams short, for that you should know.

NPP, unlike the NDC, will rely on delivering on their promises and the public confidence in them to stay in power longer. They will not resort to any corrupt attitudes of devising strategies through bribing certain few people to vociferously go out to deceive the people telling them to believe that white is black and the vice versa, or to install election-rigging machines to win elections hence always obstinately going against the wish of the people to do what and as they want.

I count on you, Vice President Dr Bawumia, to be honest with President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, each correcting, and redirecting the steps of the other if found to be veering away from your promises and the public’s high expectations from you.

It shall be well with you if you listened to the voices of the majority of the masses to do as they want provided it is in their best interest and in the interest of the nation but not to be like the outgone President Mahama who cultivated the habit of not listening to anyone who had never been a President of Ghana before.

I end with a quote from Plutarch - “Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly”.

Rockson Adofo