On the Run: Mahama Is One of the Bedbugs Akufo-Addo Needs to Tackle

Somebody obviously needs to tell the immediate-former President how silly and infantile he sounds, when Mr. John Dramani Mahama so shamelessly and cavalierly presumes to compare his kleptocratic and gross misrule of the country with the light years of progressive leadership being presently offered the Mahama-fatigued Ghanaian voters and citizens. The clearly psychologically disoriented Bole-Bamboi native may very well be in dire need of the services of a shrink or a high-end psychiatrist, to hear him disdainfully blame President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) for having infested the country’s Senior High Schools with bedbugs, by intelligently and progressively respecting the inalienable fundamental human right of every SHS-age Ghanaian student to access the same.

Well, the irony and joke here is that the most recent record of the pandemic infestation of bedbugs in our Senior High Schools and Middle-Boarding Schools was reported as relatively far back as 2015, when Mr. Mahama was the Chief Resident of the Jubilee-Flagstaff House. And so the bad news for this political desperado is that a full one-third of eligible SHS students were totally bereft of any chance of attending the same. Massive production of illiteracy plus heavy-bedbug infestation of our SHS dormitories was the legacy bequeathed Ghanaians by the Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Now, compare the preceding with the full-capacity SHS attendance plus steady fumigation of the dormitories of these SHS boarding schools against bedbug infestation and then, Dear Reader, draw the balance sheet. Which of the two regimes seems more deliberative, progressive and strategically constructive?

The last time that I checked, abject irresponsibility and politically regressive megalomania were not part of the job description of the qualities of the ideal President of Fourth-Republican Ghana. And yet, listening to the “former” President address some of his party’s members at Ada, in the Greater-Accra Region, recently, one would have thought that there was a cattle-call for the immediate recruitment of SADA, GYEEDA and SUBAH scam-artists (See “Mahama Tells Nana Addo to Tackle Bedbugs in Schools” CitiNewsRoom.com / Modernghana.com 11/3/18). He needs to be also quizzed about precisely when he and his double-salary drawing cabinet kleptocrats came to the sudden realization that more SHS buildings needed to be constructed, during the 28 years that the Rawlings-, Mills- and Mahama-led Provisional/National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) held the reins of governance. Let’s not even broach the perennial problem of “schools-under-trees” even in Mr. Mahama’s own backyard of the so-called Three-Northern-Regions.

The fact of the matter is that in just 20 months, the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has done more to grow the economy of Ghana than the Mills-Mahama regime did in 8 years. His very stale-looking and glass-paper- / sand-paper-textured face looks as if it has been colonized by soccer-playing bedbugs; so what really is the former “Shit-Bomber” talking about here? And, then also, would Mr. Mahama have waited for umpteen years for adequate school-building facilities to have been constructed before been afforded the fundamental human right to access the SHS system , if he were the son of one of those “Langalanga” PWD laborers whose Achimota-attending children he so scandalously and savagely mocked in his ghost-written political autobiography – a glaring contradiction in terms, of course – titled “My First Coup”? Indeed, it continues to stagger my imagination how such an insufferably arrogant brat could actually succeed to the Presidency of Ghana, but for the lurid ethno-regional shenanigans of “Injustice” William Atuguba?

And does Mr. Mahama know what “remedial classes” are? And would he bet his proverbial bottom-dollar that payment for remedial or extra tutorials never existed under the Mills-Mahama tenure? I mean, why does this mediocre mind so cavalierly presume to insult the intelligence of Ghanaian citizens and the electorate at the least opportunity of public address? How many of the 200 promised Community Day Schools was he able to actually put on the ground? You know, the last time that I checked, not even 20-percent of these school buildings had been constructed during the four-and-half years that he held the democratic reins of governance, let alone been fully equipped with up-to-date hi-tech learning tools. We are talking about a man whose idea of “social intervention” is the distribution of Tampons, or sanitary pads, and condoms to underage schoolchildren. And such a scoundrel wants to be given another chance to further regress the development and progress of our country? Hell, no!

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York
November 10, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]