Trust Me, John Mahama Will Never Be President of Ghana Again – Part 1

To be certain, no levelheaded Ghanaian citizen or reasonably well-educated mature eligible voter ever believed in or naively pushed or promoted the purely mythological concept of then Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s being “incorruptible” by any stretch of the imagination. Compared to former President John Dramani Mahama? A deafeningly resounding “Yes!” of course. So, I was quite amused in no small measure, when I read the vacuously sarcastic spoof by Alhaji Mustapha Iddrisu titled “I Am 100% Certain that If JM Was Still President…” (Modernghana.com 8/18/19).

It is the kind of jejune and infantile spoof that no emotionally balanced and mature and critically thinking adult would entertain, much less presume to pen and publish with the rather intellectually insulting objective of making former President John Dramani Mahama seem to be at least ten times better than this Woyome look-alike actually was, as substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana for some four tediously protracted years; and before the latter period, another equally lackluster and unhealthily drawn-out six months, as Ghana’s Interim-President.

The fact of the matter, even as yours truly has had countless occasions to observe in the recent past, is that Mr. John Dramani Mahama was the greatest mistake that the then Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, late, made in the choice of his running-mate for the 2008 Presidential Election, in an obvious bid to proving to the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian electorate that if he was given the proverbial “nod” by being voted President, the former Vice-President John Evans Atta-Mills would never allow the longest-ruling Ghanaian strongman, who had also, by the way, knighted then Candidate Atta-Mills a hereditary “Crown Prince,” in what became infamously known as “The Swedru Declaration,” to look over his saggy shoulders and call the shots from behind in his retirement.

Indeed, anybody who has sedulously followed political developments in Ghana over the past decade would be extremely hard put to conclude that, in fact, voting the former Rawlings-appointed Deputy Communications Minister and, later, substantive Communications Minister, into power as President of Ghana had been the right thing to do. In reality, it actually shows how inexcusably clueless the former University of Ghana’s tax-law professor, who made the former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the Gonja-West Constituency, was in figuring out his most inveterate internal political enemy and enemies within the Jerry John Rawlings-fangled “revolutionary” steamroller that is the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

To be certain, short of shooting up his way back to the Jubilee-Flagstaff House, as he brazenly indicated recently in his infamous “Boot-for-Boot” electioneering campaign address, there is absolutely no way that anybody who suffered through the four-and-half years that Mr. Mahama smugly and insolently presided over “Dumsor” would make another egregious mistake of having this socioeconomic goon voted back to power for an abominable reprise of the same, regardless of what Nana Akufo-Addo may either be perceived or not be perceived to be doing right or wrong, realistically or ideologically so refracted.

In other words, however “corrupt” one decides President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to be, the indisputable fact still remains that Mr. John Dramani Mahama holds the unbreakable Guinness Book of Records’ accolade of being “the most corrupt President ever in the history of Ghana.” We are not making up stuff here, Dear Reader; this accolade comes from the horse’s own mouth, that is, from the authoritative mouth of the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, former President Jerry John Rawlings. Would Mr. Mustapha Iddrisu cavalierly impugn the credibility of the putative Founding-Father of his own political party on the question of the thoroughgoing corrupt nature of the man who scandalously gifted the Atiwa and Nyinahin bauxite deposits to his younger brother, Ibrahim Mahama, without parliamentary approval, in the wake of the lame-duck period between then President Mahama’s massive electoral loss to then Candidate Akufo-Addo, on December 7, 2016 and the latter’s assumption of the reins of democratic governance on January 7, 2017?

If, indeed, Mr. Mustapha Iddrisu believes his own salacious poppycock about the Akufo-Addo Administration’s generating “One Scandal Per Day,” then it goes without saying that the fanatical Mahama critic would do well to look closely at the track-record of the scandal-friendly regime that was the tenure of former President John Dramani Mahama, which witnessed “One Scandal Per Split-Second.” Did I hear anybody mention anything about “The Akonfem Scandal”? Well, for those of our readers who may not be familiar with the term, “Akonfem” refers to the nonexistent Guinea Fowls which the then President Mahama claimed to have spent millions of cedis of the Ghanaian taxpayers’ money to purchase for some poultry farmers in the North, in the name of an “agricultural revolution,” but could only lamely account for by lying to the Ghanaian citizenry that the aforesaid Guinea Fowls had taken a seasonal flight to the Burkinabe capital of Ouagadougou for a banquet, or some such codswallop of a festive event, that was being hosted for them by Mr. Mahama’s counterpart. Or maybe the festivity in question was actually being hosted by Mr. Jibril Kanazoe, the Mahama Payola Partner in the infamous Ford Expedition Affair? Go figure!

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
August 18, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]