You Voted for Your Northern Star, Not for Change

Let’s get to brass-tacks, as it were: the fact of the matter is that most of the citizens and inhabitants along the so-called Eastern Corridor, particularly in the Northern and Volta regions, did not vote for change in the 2016 general election, just as they had not voted for change in the 2012 general election. In 2008, they actually collaborated with some anti-Akufo-Addo elements of the then-ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to vote for the systematic regression and the steady and deliberate underdevelopment of Ghana. Which was why they nihilistically ignored the fact that under the John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party, the hitherto steadily shrinking macro-economy had been quadrupled four-fold in a manner that had never been experienced since Ghana attained self-rule from British colonial domination.

There is an inexcusably embarrassing paradox in the 2008 electoral defeat of then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that the theme and objective of this column do not permit me to presently delve into. But one thing is crystal clear: in 2012, most of the residents and inhabitants along especially the northern-half of the so-called Eastern Corridor Highway or Roadway took then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama’s cheap vote-getting bait that he was the best and last chance for the material catchup development of the northern-half of the country with the rest of the country, especially the mineral-rich Akan-dominated southern-half of the country. Mr. Mahama also virulently accused Akans – never mind the fact of the half-Anlo-Ewe Chairman Jerry John Rawlings’ having ruled Ghana for 20 protracted years – of having politically sidelined the country’s northern-descended leaders and politicians.

“They have made us spare-Tires,” then-Candidate Mahama pontifically told a teeming audience of NDC supporters in the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale. “Put me in the driver’s seat, and I will develop the Three-Northern-Regions like the other regions in the ‘Kabonga’-dominated South, and none of you would have to travel to those parts of the country looking for menial and such undignified jobs as Kayayes.” Well, nearly 6 years later and after 8 years of National Democratic Congress’ abject misrule, those levelheaded Ghanaian citizens among us would frankly and unreservedly attest to the grim fact that today, the so-called Three-Northern Regions are far worse off than they were at the end of 2008, when the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party handed over the democratic reins of governance to the newly elected John Evans Atta-Mills-led National Democratic Congress.

Just under 2 years ago, when then-President John Dramani Mahama was jack-booted from the Jubilee-Flagstaff House, nearly 40 percent of eligible Senior High School candidates from the Three-Northern-Regions could not attend because their “democratic socialist-oriented” Northern Star had decided that a fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative, such as was recently and auspiciously implemented by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was a practical impossibility. At best, the then Chief Resident of the erstwhile Flagstaff House had declared: “A fee-free Senior High School System in this day and age is at best a pipe-dream. Our opponents would promise you anything just to get power.” Well, 18 months later, Ghanaian voters know who had hoodwinked them in order to get full access to our national treasury and to rob us raw with a cabal of kinsmen, cronies and associates. This was the picture that sprang to mind when I came across the news article captioned “We’re Not Seeing the Change We Voted for’ – Eastern Corridor Road Users” CitiNewsRoom.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/10/18).

Well, if these teamsters and motorists did some frank and honest soul-searching, they would come to the sober realization that the abjectly poor state of the Eastern Corridor Highway is in the intolerable condition in which it is presently because in 2008, 2012 and, yes, 2016, they voted for the wrong Presidential Candidate and the wrong political party. You see, former President John Dramani Mahama would rather siphon money earmarked for the upkeep of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) into his electioneering campaign war chest. You can just check this fact up with Mr. Sylvester Mensah, the former Executive-Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA). Mr. Mahama would also rather grant concessional licenses and certificates over all our mineral-laden lands to his younger brother, Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, than make our roads and highways motorable.

The Akufo-Addo critics must be honest enough to face up to their pathological cynicism and stop pretending to have heavily invested in the political fortunes of Ghana’s former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice when, in fact, it was in the misfired political fortunes of their own kinsman and tribesman around which they have been hedging their bet for the past dozen years.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 5, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]