Sorry, But Ghanaians Have Already Had Our Museveni

During his most recent lecture at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government – actually, it was during the Question-And-Answer (Q&A) period following his lecture – we are told that a Ugandan graduate student by the name of Hilary Innocent Taylor asked Ghana’s President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo whether he would consent to acceding to the Ugandan Presidency, while the 33-year ruling Constitutional Dictator, Mr. Yoweri Museveni, was delightfully shipped out as a replacement for the progressive, visionary and dynamic Ghanaian leader (See “Laughter at Harvard as Ugandan Wishes to Swap Museveni for Nana Addo” CitiNewsRoom.com 3/30/19). I could not help but add my own raucous laughter well after the fact.

Very likely, Mr. Taylor did not intend the implicit insult that he reportedly volleyed at Ghanaians, at large, in the process; but I, personally, would have been more sympathetic if Mr. Taylor had simply called for President Museveni to be simply cast out of Ugandan society and sent into exile to any other country that was willing to grant the jaded and fast-aging dictator political asylum, in much the same manner granted the late President Idi Amin-Dada by the Saudi authorities. In Ghana, other than the conspiratorial nation-wrecking Mahama Posse, I really do not see where and how an insufferably ham-fisted and politically extortionate Mr. Museveni could fit in. Kenya, maybe, where the political culture is strikingly akin to that of neighboring Uganda and the Kenyatta Dynasty is still firmly in control of national affairs.

I could even imagine the longtime Ghanaian Kenyatta shill, at least during Kenya’s most recent presidential election, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, being named by a President Museveni to the enviable post of Prime Minister. I really do. And I am quite certain that the former Deputy Education Minister and the main opposition National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the North-Tongu Constituency, of Ghana’s Volta Region, would quite creditably acquit himself in his new portfolio. But, of course, we all know that ours is the real world, not the wishful one, where even mendicants or beggers routinely ride the well-caparisoned steeds of monarchs. It is also quite obvious that Mr. Taylor, the Ugandan-born Kennedy School of Government’s graduate, is rather too young to remember that blood-curdling period between the late 1970s and 80s, onto the very threshold of the Twenty-First Century, when Ghanaians sported our own thoroughgoing corrupt and extortionate strongman by the Anglo-Scottish name of Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings.

Ironically, like the “freedom-fighting” Mr. Museveni of the 1980s, Chairman Rawlings was dearly beloved all over the continent in his prime. Mr. Museveni, by the Americans, in particular, for speaking the English language with a near-native phonetical command that only a fairly well-educated post-graduate African could notch or approach. Even more significant, Mr. Museveni had amply demonstrated to the Americans and, to be certain, the West, in general, that in this former guerrilla-war commander, the witheringly near-autarkic nationalist that personified Dr. Idi Amin-Dada, the globally celebrated “King of Scotland,” a la Hollywood, was decidedly a politically irrecoverable relic of the past.

On the other hand, a relatively wet-eared and scandalously naïve half-white Mr. Rawlings decided to rather inexpediently truck with faux-socialist autocrats like President Fidel Castro and Libyan strongman Muammar Al-Gaddhafy. Unlike the relatively much savvier Mr. Museveni, the Russians did not seem to have much political use for the half-Ghanaian waif who seemed to have primarily cannibalized the Presidency as a means of proving to his widely reported disapproving father, the low-grade expatriate department-store employee, Mr. John, that he counted for something really significant, after all; and also that in denying the younger Mr. John the legitimate aegis of paternity, the retired and long-returned scrawny Scottish Highlander had grossly misfired (See Mr. Rawlings’ Tearful Interview with Diane Sawyer on the CBS-TV Magazine Program “60 Minutes).

Ultimately, however, what Mr. Taylor’s wishful plea means, and I hope former President John Dramani Mahama is also taking sedulous note of the preceding, is the fact that the nonesuch progressive policy initiatives being implemented in Ghana, with lightning speed, by his immediate successor, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, have found deep resonance and great approval with most progressive-minded and enlightened citizens all across the African continent. Simple Translation: The Mahama Posse Shall Be Toast Come December 2020.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 30, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]