One Month Of The Elephant's Grand Entry Into The Flagstaff House

The caption of this piece may appear somewhat overwrought and pre-matured, but the content is largely unvarnished truth lest I be labelled as a propagandist and a sensationalist.

As a matter of observation, many a Ghanaian could feel the pulse of something bigger about to happen when during his investiture speech, president Akufu- Addo said he expects all hands on deck and urged us to be “citizens [and] not spectators; responsible citizens [who will be involved in] building our communities and nation”. But the good will and camaraderie that he and the NPP enjoyed in the wake of the 2016 elections began fizzling out moments after the January 7 inauguration.

The higher-ups of the erstwhile administration who had hit the hay as a result of the defeat suffered in the December polls, all of a sudden seemed to have found their voices. Their voices travelled like water falling in drops down the spiralling canals of my ears until I resolved to listen no more.

They sung in unison the wild refrain of plagiarism. President Akufu- Addo had come to their rescue. He had committed the unpardonable sin. He had provided them with a refuge. The sincere and unreserved apology from Eugene Arhin didn’t pass muster with them.

They needed to sing this chorus loudly till their voices were lost. They had to placate their disgruntled supporters lest, they be made to face their fury for putting up a poor show in the elections.

And, the other day, the national chairman of the NDC, Kofi Portofy and the unwary executives of the party squealed contumely as if there were no tomorrow. The tenor of their tirades revealed something close to an attempt to hide behind their failure.

Their party supporters were being attacked. They feared for their lives. They threatened that if the police didn’t protect them, they were going to take the law into their own hands. Alas, we had to revisit the disquieting subject of unlawful seizure of state property by some rabid youth of the victorious party when there is a transition from one political party to the other.

Meanwhile, I was decidedly appalled by the insouciant and non-committal posture of President Akufu- Addo. I thought he would lay it on the line and rein in his party youth. We called for change, didn’t we? The expectation is that there would be a marked departure from the undignifying past. So I found the argument that the same thing happened when the NDC won the elections in 2009 to be mundane and pedestrian.

Observers of Ghana’s political space were helplessly drawn into the bedlam surrounding Akufu-Addo’s ministerial appointments. While many a Ghanaian hailed the quality of the team given that they are not just regular politicians but accomplished professionals in their own right, others thought it was another classical case of a bloated government. They argued that some of the ministerial portfolios created were self-same. They claimed that, Akufu- Addo’s government is merely a hodgepodge of some Champaign drinking plutocrats. Well, I wasn’t the least bit interested in this feckless debate. To the best of my knowledge, there is no scientific literature that suggests that the leaner the size of a government, the more effective it is.President Akufu- Addo has been given a 4 year mandate. At the end, its renewal will not be hinged on the size of his government but its ability to ameliorate the economic hardship of the Ghanaian people and its success in the national development drive. On the preceding score, President Akufu Addo comes across as though he is unfazed by the noisome and niggling commentary. He is determined to ignore whatever needs to be ignored and build a new Ghana from nothing.

Then, the obnoxious and detestable Dr Nyaho Tamakloe who mindlessly barked up the wrong tree, finally decided to come out of his rat hole and join the bandwagon to pooh-pooh the president’s ministerial nominations. He questioned Akufu- Addo’s choice of Dominic Nitiwu as defence minister.He argued rather fatuously that the latter is too young to hold such a portfolio. Why should the youth be denied the opportunity to serve if they are matured and wise enough to understand their responsibilities? Folks say, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change”. Perhaps the suspended NPP founding member only sort to make an exhibition of himself after coming to a bad end. He is yet to wake up and smell the coffee after his darling boy, John Mahama lost the 2016 elections.

Osafo Marfo and Boakye Agyarko also couldn’t help but regale us with their recondite and esoteric responses during the vetting. They were bold, took on members of the committee and argued against some of the most entrenched ideas in their respective fields. It excited me that the nominees, particularly Osafo Marfo who was to occupy the senior minister position demonstrated an unyielding countenance. For such a delicate portfolio that requires an oversight responsibility over the other ministers, you need to be firm and mettlesome.

Interestingly, Mahama Ayariga wouldn’t let the process continue without drama. He insisted against common sense that Boakye Agyarko, the then Minister of Energy-designate attempted bribing his way through. Even when it became apparent that Mahama Ayariga spun a yarn, given the patent inconsistency in the narrative, he shamelessly was on radio squealing rather luridly that he was churning out facts. When the show was finally stripped down to its decayed innards, eliciting a strong denial and rejection of this claim by Mohammed Muntaka, it became evident that it was merely the beginning of a calculated attempt within the NDC minority to surgically undermine the Haruna Idrissu leadership.

I couldn’t come to terms with the speaker of parliament’s decision to let the house conduct a probe into the matter. My contention isn’t the probe per se, but the fact that parliament seems to be investigating itself. I thought the police could have done it and would have laid to rest the lingering suspicion of a cover-up. Maybe in our world that’s the way we live our lives. You must give your eye teeth to protect your own, and, when you are alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you have told and why you should believe your own lies.

At least, my head was dizzy with delight when I heard that the much heralded campaign pledge of the NPP to implement a comprehensive national identification project had taken off. The National ID scheme should help formalize the economy through the establishment of a national database, using the National Identification System as the primary identifier, with linkages to the databases of institutions such as the Police, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Passport Office, Immigration, Courts, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).This is the change we called for.

Even though the Mahama administration came across as the most corrupt in Ghana’s history thanks to the unbridled cupidity of some of the appointees, just like many Ghanaians, I had decided to leave this perception hanging in the air because I knew that someday, some unseen spec of truth would fly into the eyes of the Ghanaian people. But these thoughts broke apart in my head and were replaced with strange fragments when Dr Bawumia revealed that the official residence being constructed for the Vice President on the Switchback road at Cantonments in Accra costs US$13.9 million. Worse is that the contract for the construction was through a non-competitive bidding (sole sourcing).So as was often the case during the Mahama administration, our purloining politicos developed a better descriptive vocabulary for lying:a way to distinguish the lies that the lying politicos themselves believe in.That way, until they came against limpid evidence to controvert their lies,they always got away with murder.

Just when we were almost convinced that the maleficent and unlawful seizure of state property had been nipped in the bud, there was another episode of rambunctious NPP aficionados on rampage. Persons suspected to be military men stormed the private residence of Kofi Adams at Golf City in Tema and seized all his five vehicles.Regretably, Nana Obiri Boahen, the deputy General secretary of the NPP tried with too much mettle to defend this done thing. He argued that the chassis number of one of the V8 Land Cruisers was changed before it was transferred to Kofi Adams and that it was stolen and sold. Even when the national security minister attempted handling the matter with some finesse when he called to apologise to Mr Adams, stating that the operation was not officially sanctioned, Nana Obiri Boahen insisted against common sense that he was aggrieved and dissatisfied with how the matter was being handled and impugned the reputation of the honourable Albert Kan Dapah.

I admired Kofi Adams for his decision to reject the returned vehicles. I could read from his posturing that life is neither something you defend by hiding nor surrendering calmly on other people’s terms, but something you live bravely, out in the open, and that if you have to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms.

It is also worth stressing that it came as all too shocking when the Black stars got the wooden spoon during this year’s AFCON after making it to the last four. Some football pundits grittily suggested that with a new government in place, we could see a repeat of the 1982 scenerio.Ghana re-wrote history by becoming the first country to win the AFCON on penalties after 120 minutes. When the new government led by Flt Lt J.J Rawlings, the chairman of PNDC, took over, he insisted that Ghana should participate.

So after 35 years of waiting joylessly, a smudge of expectation leaked in our minds, especially so when the tournament started on the heels of the inauguration of a new government which had a “change agenda” to implement. Had the Black stars won the tournament, it would have been an auspicious start for the Akufu-Addo government.

In sum, the first one month of Akufu-Addo’s presidency has been quite satisfactory, but out of the ordinary, in the month of January, the sky smashed against rooftops: Heaven opened and the rain hammered down in torrents, ripping off the roof of parliament house.

I do not know if this presages good or ill omen. At best, president Akufu-Addo has been able to put together a government from a chaos of vexation and alleged bribery during the vetting. The whole of Ghana is still saturated with his presence.

He has a huge opportunity to fix up the splintered wreck of the Ghanaian economy. He has his destiny in his palms like a fortune teller’s globe shattering with both bad and good news. If he comes up roses, his memorabilia would be returned to again and again long after he has gone the way of all mortals.