Did Mahama Campaign on Half-Completed Projects?

Mahama could really not have “lambasted” President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for supposedly “abandoning” the former President’s so-called E-Block projects (See “Mahama Lambastes Government for Abandoning E-Block Projects” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/27/19). Truth be told: It was rather Mr. John Dramani Mahama who abandoned the E-Block Projects, after pledging to Ghanaians that given a four-year electoral mandate, as clearly stipulated by the country’s 1992 Republican Constitution, he intended to complete at least some 200 E-Block physical plants or buildings. Well, by the close of his tenure, on January 7, 2017, the former President had completed only 40, by liberal estimates, of the 200 E-Blocks promised.

That means an 80-percent deficit of his promise. Put in simple language, by the close of his Dumsor-inflected tenure, Mr. Mahama had completed just 20-percent of the Senior High Schools’ infrastructural projects that he promised heading into the 2016 Presidential Election. In brief, when it comes to his concrete contribution to the development of the SHS System, Mr. Mahama was a massive failure. It is also significant to highlight President Akufo-Addo’s recent observation, while touring the Upper-West Region, among a couple of other regions in the northern-half of the country, that most of the so-called E-Blocks or state-of-the-art physical plants or SHS buildings that the former President claims to have completed, have yet to be fully equipped with the necessary fiberoptic cables to enable ready access to Information Communication Technology.

But, perhaps, what is even more significant to underscore here is the morbidly cavalier attitude of the former President towards his own abject display of administrative incompetence and pathological profligacy. You see, delaying the completion of these projects means added costs to both these physical plants themselves and the payment of contractors as well. Which further means that whatever budgetary arrangements the present government might have made towards the implementation of its own policy initiatives or projects may have to be either delayed or abandoned altogether, while President Akufo-Addo tries to complete important projects left uncompleted by a government that had unwisely bitten more than it could chew. This is rather unfair and flagrantly mischievous on the part of the former President, because the now-President Akufo-Addo had not campaigned on the basis or platform of cleaning up after the woefully failed Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress.

Going into the 2012 Presidential Election, the then Interim President John Dramani Mahama, having served in the capacity of Vice-President to then President John Evans Atta-Mills, was fully cognizant of the fact that he had four years to fulfill his electioneering campaign promises, and not to leave them half-fulfilled for his successor who, by the way, came with his own agenda, to fulfill or complete the same. The former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the Gonja-West Constituency ought to also be ashamed of himself for not having been able to complete the Mpaha Community Day School, in the Central Gonja District, during the 8 years that he served at the Presidency. The man who vehemently rejected the auspicious and intellectually and culturally salutary implementation of the fee-free Senior High School System, has absolutely no locus standi to presume to self-righteously upbraid Nana Akufo-Addo for neglecting the educational needs of the inhabitants of the Yapei-Kusawga Constituency in his newly Akufo-Addo-created Savannah home region.

Now, the most logical question to ask here is as follows: Didn’t Mr. Mahama know of the existence of the people of the Yapei-Kusawga Constituency during the 8 long years that he served, respectively, as Vice-President and substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana? No power-loving Ghanaian politician could be at once this administratively incompetent and socially irresponsible.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
August 27, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]