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Does Perseverance Pay? The Road To Ghana’s Presidency

Feature Article The writer is a co-founder of CHANGE MAKERS. Email;jeliliusgmail.com;tel;0541238987Jelili Jerry AFOLABI
JUL 27, 2017 LISTEN
The writer is a co-founder of CHANGE MAKERS. Email;[email protected];tel;0541238987 ©Jelili Jerry AFOLABI

Perseverance is the word that has brought change to the world, created empires, conglomerates, invented machines and made heroes for history to talk about. Men and women emerge exceptional and great as a result of perseverance, hard work, steadfastness and persistence. Every generation of the world, since creation, has produced great, powerful discoverers, presidents and geniuses as a result of the perseverance of these individuals. We can make reference to a few: Martin Luther King Jr, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Colonel Sanders, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Aliko Dangote, Barak Obama and our own Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Perseverance is steadfastness in doing something despite delay in achieving success. One of the famous quotes by the immediate past president of the United States of America, who ascended to the office by his character of perseverance is; “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere” Barak Obama.

The Road to the Presidency
The 72 year old president of the Republic of Ghana has traveled the road of failure countless times. Winston Churchill said Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’. Perseverance, hard work and tenacity is what has made Nana Akufo Addo the president of Ghana. He served as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice in the John Agyekum Kufuor administration after he lost his first bid for presidential nomination of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in October 1998. For him, it was the beginning of putting a dream he had nurtured to test. He learnt from this failure to become better for the next opportunity. As he kept his eyes on the goal, Nana Akufo Addo again presented himself in the 2007 famous NPP presidential nominee contest that saw 16 other individuals in the race which he won 48% and got a unanimous endorsement by the party to stand for president on the ticket of the party for the first time. Knowing that; Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. The presidential race of 2008 presented the first defeat to Nana Akufo Addo in his first bid for president of Ghana. He persevered, worked hard and used the period to add more value to himself.

Four years on, the man who had failed in his attempt to be president got elected to run again on the ticket of the NPP which brought him yet another painful defeat and resulted in a court case. The NPP had alleged that they noted significant discrepancies in the polling results and challenged the presidential results in court. This dragged on for almost 10 months. Finally, the court declared the National Democratic Congress (NDC) winner of the 2012 presidential race “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” -Henry Ford.

For Nana Akufo Addo it was the time to re-strategize and change the game plan.

Perseverance requires patience. Hard work will yield success. In the meantime, optimism shouldn’t be lost. No bad harvest in a season should prevent us from fresh sowing.-Anonymous

The people of Ghana accorded him a lot of respect and the international world saluted him for his statesmanship and respect for democracy. Nana Akufo Addo did not give up, but kept working hard because for him “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” as Thomas Edison once said.

As natural, people in life after several failed attempts on a goal or life aspiration give up. The persevering Nana Akufo Addo again made a public announcement in March 2014 to run for the president on the ticket of the NPP for the third consecutive time, which he won.

During the intervening period, Nana used the opportunity to correct erroneous impressions that had been attributed to him. At the polls on December 7, 2016, Nana made history by being the first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent president in his first term. Nana Akufo Addo was declared the president-elect of the Republic of Ghana by the EC Chair and was sworn in on 7th January as president.

Conclusion
“Failure is what gives birth to perseverance, in persevering comes success and success makes history”Jelili Jerry AFOLABI (Feb.2017).When we are determined and add hard work there is no goal we cannot achieve in life. Indeed perseverance pays; Honey lies in every flower, but it takes a bee to find the one laden with it to pull it out. Akin to this is the fortitude and perseverance of a manager that will sustain him well through periods of grueling challenges. In the battle between the river and the rock, the river will always win. Not through strength but through perseverance.

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