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Mahama Is No Classmate Of Akufo-Addo’s

Feature Article Mahama Is No Classmate Of Akufo-Addos
FEB 11, 2018 LISTEN

All jokes aside, former President John Dramani Mahama should stop pretending as if he is the peer or classmate of President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo. He may have preceded the latter to the Presidency, but in terms of job performance and emotional maturity and intellectual acumen, Mr. Mahama has absolutely no peer among Ghana’s postcolonial leaders. He may actually be the worst, most corrupt and incompetent and arrogant President that Ghana has ever had. He can also not fool anybody about the fact that he very well may have been collaborating with another sore political loser to undermine Nana Akufo-Addo’s progressive fee-free Senior High School policy initiative (See “Information Minister Jabs Mahama Over Free SHS” RainbowRadioOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/27/18).

It is an open-secret that nearly every single one of the key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) – including the former President, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the former Deputy Education Minister and Mr. Alban SK Bagbin, the longest-serving Parliamentarian – have all gone on record to be virulently against the creative and salutary implementation of the fee-free Senior High School System. Mr. Mahama has gone on record as saying that the fee-free SHS initiative was not sustainable, while the Nadowli-Kaleo NDC-MP has been widely quoted to be saying that the fee-free SHS policy initiative was unconstitutional and may very well be criminal as well.

When they are not busy maligning the need for a progressive policy of universal education in the country, the NDC political machine operatives may be seen and heard faulting President Akufo-Addo and Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the Education Minister, for congesting our boarding schools with students who have been sleeping on blankets and mattresses spread out or plunked down onto bare floors in dormitories and verandahs. In other words, these cynical critics believe in an elitist educational system that strictly limits pupil and student intake in our schools. The fact of the matter is that it is far more progressive for all qualified pupils and students to be enrolled in our schools, than to have a remarkable percentage of these potential future professionals and leaders denied this fundamental self-improvement opportunity merely because some populist politicians prefer to engage in lip service than real service.

What is worrisome is the dastardly and disingenuous attempt by the former President, through his cousin and spokeswoman, Mrs. Joyce BawaMotgari, the former Deputy Road Transport Minister, to vehemently deny that he is one of the influential opposition party leaders who have been badmouthing Nana Akufo-Addo for attempting to implement a fee-free universal primary and secondary educational system. That he has been studiously collaborating with a failed former associate of President Akufo-Addo’s, ought to be the least bit of the worries of Mr. Mahama. What he needs to worry about more than anything else, is the irreparably bad light in which the former Atta-Mills second-bananas has indelibly put himself.

His patently pedestrian and infantile resort to faux political activism, a clearly opportunistic gimmick aimed at positioning himself for a second shot at the Presidency, is highly unlikely to gel or succeed. He has indelibly put himself in a bad light because his attention-seeking monthly marches across towns and cities in the country are not likely to fool Ghanaian voters who have experienced the vintage taste of the creative and constructive leadership of Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia and their cabinet of creative, progressive and civically minded intellectuals and professionals, the overwhelming majority of whom have acquitted themselves creditably in their fields of endeavor or specialties.

Well, the last time that I checked, marching and throwing tantrums was scarcely any progressive-minded and levelheaded thinker’s idea of good and competent governance.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

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