Akufo-Addo Did Not Need To Convince Anybody In His US-Ghana Military Cooperation Address

There is this group of National Democratic Congress’ hirelings calling themselves “researchers,” who claim that the April 5, 2018 multicast address presentation delivered by President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo did little to either convince or assuage the concerns of Ghanaian citizens vis-à-vis the question of whether the United States of America had demanded to be permitted to establish a Military Base in Ghana. Well, as the President of Ghana made it pointedly clear to the nation in his watershed Thursday address, the Americans have not demanded to be permitted to establish a Military Base on the soils of Ghana; and neither does Ghana intend to permit the establishment of any foreign Military Base in the country. The recent ratification of the Enhanced Military and Security Cooperation Agreement (EMSCA) does not allow for the establishment of any Military Base in Ghana, according to Nana Akufo-Addo (See “Military Base Or No Military Base: Akufo-Addo Failed to Convince Ghanaians – Report” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/11/18).

First of all, the so-called Report on President Akufo-Addo’s address put out by Dr. EtseSikanku, the notoriously rabid anti-New Patriotic Party (NPP) critic and his three associates, namely, Messrs. Frank Kofi Boadi, Halisa Aziz and Kwame Fordjuor, has absolutely no relevance because the clearly stated objective and/or intent of the President’s address was not to convince any group or section of Ghanaian citizenry as to whether, indeed, per the EMSCA pact, the United States intended to establish a Military Base in Ghana with the flagrant complicity of the ruling New Patriotic Party. By the time that Nana Akufo-Addo delivered his April 5 address to the nation, the EMSCA document had already been openly debated and legitimately ratified by Parliament. Rather, the primary objective of the address was to vehemently rebut the grossly misleading propaganda gimmickry disseminated into the media mainstream by elements of the “unspeakably hypocritical” leadership of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

On the latter score, there can be no gainsaying that Nana Akufo-Addo put a light-age of distance in credibility between himself and those of his NDC predecessors who had actually initiated the kind of military cooperation agreement that the likes of former Presidents Jerry John Rawlings and John Dramani Mahama are now vehemently opposing. Nana Akufo-Addo, contrary to what Dr. Sikanku and his associates would have Ghanaians believe, did not evade any leadership responsibility, when the President stated that his rabble-rousing NDC detractors had, in fact, signed a strikingly similar agreement with the Americans. Rather, what Nana Akufo-Addo rightfully sought to put into perspective was the fact that he had been forced to renew Ghana’s military and security cooperation agreement with the United States, because the cynical and hypocritical likes of former Presidents Rawlings and John Dramani Mahama had set the criminal precedent of striking military agreements with the world’s greatest military power, secretly, without consulting with the legitimately elected representatives of the Ghanaian people, as specifically enjoined by the country’s 1992 Republican Constitution.

In real terms, what Nana Akufo-Addo has been doing but did not specify, for obvious diplomatic reasons, is damage control. Indeed, taking the sort of leadership responsibility that Dr. Sikanku and his disingenuous NDC propagandists are arguing for, would have only unwisely set the Akufo-Addo government against the interests of the United States in the West African sub-region, which, in effect, would have achieved precisely the scapegoating ploy of the rabidly anti-American key operatives of the National Democratic Congress. One only has to critically examine the policy initiatives and pronouncements of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his NDC successors from December 31, 1981 to January 2001; and again, from January 2009 to January 2017 to get a full picture of what I am alluding to here. Then also, one has to examine the foreign policy dealings of the National Democratic Congress’ leadership with the proverbial international community.

But what is even more scandalous about the so-called research report of the Sikanku Gang, is the facile presumption that, somehow, the latest military and security cooperation agreement ratified by Ghana’s 7^th Parliament, under the tenure of Nana Akufo-Addo, was hatched or developed out of a vacuum. It is a wonder why any group of credible researchers would have Ghanaians ignore the all-too-glaring fact that the NDC leadership would secretly and illegally sign at least three military and security cooperation agreements with the United States in a constitutional democratic political culture. That absolutely no scholarly and/or objective attempt is made by the Sikanku Gang to expose the furtive or surreptitious role played by the NDC leadership in the history of the ratification of military and security cooperation agreements with the United States is all the more to be pitied.

You see, mischievously dressing up patent falsehood in the guise of scholastic objectivity actually makes the Sikanku Gang look foolish and scandalously amateurish. I sincerely don’t think and believe that this group of intellectual sophomores realizes this most embarrassing fact of its strategic blunder. I still, nonetheless, hope that former President John Dramani Mahama and his cronies handsomely paid these hopelessly amateurish NDC propagandists.

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