They Are Called Fanatics

The Prophet of Tampons or Sanitary Pads – that was his answer to a fee-free Senior High School education policy initiative - or the Guinea Fowls purchased with the taxpayer’s hard-earned money that vamoosed to Burkina Faso, never to return and be seen again. Or the Prophet of Dumsor and the summary abrogation of teacher- and nurse-trainee allowances? GYEEDA, SADA and SUBAH and GUBAH? I kept wondering when I came across the news article captioned “Mahama Was Treated Like a Prophet in My Constituency – Pelpuo” (Modernghana.com 5/27/18). In the afore-referenced article, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Wa-Central, in the Upper-West Region, was reported to have told the host of CitiFM’s “The Big Issue” that most of his constituents envisage former President John Dramani Mahama to be a prophet.

Maybe so. But I am quite convinced that this weird idea of Mr. Mahama’s being a prophet has something more to do with a poorly educated star-struck constituents bizarrely mesmerized by the sheer physical presence of a democratically ousted leader they never really had the chance to get up-close and personal with than anything else. It was at one of the so-called monthly Unity Walks organized nationwide by some key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). The self-styled “North Star” and “Spare-Tire” social democrat says that he wants to be afforded another chance to lord it over the very Ghanaian electorate whom he once had the chutzpah to caution against any criticism of his job performance, because the very people who had offered him their electoral mandate in the 2012 Presidential Election had absolutely no right to criticize him, because those wretched and scum of humanity had never gotten elected as President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana.

That was how arrogant the Bole-Bamboi native had been, once he had gotten to ride on the backs of the people to the erstwhile Flagstaff House, presently renamed Jubilee House. A prophet, indeed, if one listened to Mr. Rashid Pelpuo, the former Atta-Mills’ Sports Minister who got summarily fired from his job and promptly expelled from the Mills-Mahama cabinet while on an official assignment somewhere in the southern Africa region. Zimbabwe, if memory serves me accurately. I have heard your desperate calls and cries for real leadership of substance, the man who nearly effectively collapsed the Kufuor-fangled National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is widely reported to have posted on his Facebook page.

His publicly stated intention to have a rematch with Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the man who resoundingly trounced him at the December 2016 polls, is rather amusing if also because it seems to be squarely predicated on vanity rather any remarkable or tangible achievements that he had notched during the four-and-half years that he literally ruled the roost. Other than his gross administrative incompetence having resulted in the spooky word of “Dumsor,” or erratic power supply, having made it into the global lexicon, one is extremely hard put to pinpoint any single significant achievement notched by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress, the party of the infamous Cash-and-Carry healthcare policy initiative.

I kept wondering what possibly could have caused the constituents of Mr. Pelpuo’sWa-Central Constituency to envisage Mr. Mahama as a prophet. A prophet of doom, maybe?

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