What Rawlings Would Never Have Said About John Mahama

It came as a seismic epiphanic flash of prophetic annunciation to see former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor literally levitate out of his latter-day trademark wheelchair to panegyrize and heap encomiums on the leadership capacity and the unique vision of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), in the wake of Dr. Bawumia’s decisive Presidential-Election Primary Victory of November 4, 2023, in which the Walewale native, from the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, emerged with over 60-percent of the tabulated valid delegate votes, amidst fierce party infighting in a devious attempt by some failed establishment candidates to scuttle the hard-fought and the well-deserved presidential aspiration of the twice-elected Running-Mate and Substantive Vice-President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

When the 84-year-old Kumasi-born and Oxbridge-educated lawyer and economist stood up from his wheelchair, the 6-footer and recently widowed, twice-elected former President sanguinely declared on behalf of his fellow Oxonian and internationally renowned economist as follows: “I am appealing to the whole nation to give this astute and visionary young man the chance to come and lead Ghana. I have a strong feeling that Dr. Bawumia is truly the man of the moment and Ghana must give him a chance” (See “I Have a Very Strong Feeling Bawumia Is the Man of the Moment – Kufuor” Ghanaweb.com 2/7/24).

The preceding observation and declaration was strikingly reminiscent of Dr. J B Danquah’s historic introduction of the newly minted Oxbridge and University of London-educated Dr. K A Busia in the mid-1950s, that is, some 70 years ago, at exactly about the very same moment that the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics came to the definitive conclusion that it was nigh time for the University of London alumnus to gracefully and effectively bow out of active political engagement, in the wake of the catastrophic breakup and the collapse of the Danquah and the Alfred George “Paa” Grant-founded United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), primarily as a result of the decision by a radically pro-independence future Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah to part ways with the staid and elitist leadership of the UGCC and form the Convention People’s Party (CPP).

The “Been-To” and recent returnee from the United States of America and Great Britain had been the lynchpin of the politically sluggish and unsavorily conservative and feudally oriented UGCC leadership, whom the Lincoln College – presently Lincoln University – and University of Pennsylvania-educated native of Nkroful village, in present-day Western Region, found to be too woefully out of touch with the reality of the popular pulse and political climate on the ground. “Give this young man the well-deserved opportunity to prove himself,” Danquah would tell a teeming crowd of the newly formed United Party (UP), a hodgepodge agglomeration of several dozens of ethnically oriented political groupings, following Nkrumah’s passage of a law expressly prohibiting the formation of political parties constituted along the parochial and strategically unprogressive lines for a nation desirous of radically and effectively severing its master-servant relationship with Imperial Britain. The future Prime Minister Busia was at the time the leader of the Ghana Congress Party (GCP).

Now, what is significant about the recent resonant endorsement of Candidate Bawumia by former President Agyekum-Kufuor is the fact that it is, to-date, the most authoritative and credible endorsement of its kind in the runup to the 2024 Presidential Election, being also the fact that Dr. Bawumia was not always one of the favored presidential aspirants and/or candidates in the playbook of the “Gentle Giant.” Which, of course, could absolutely in no way be said of the relationship that had existed between the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings and the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama, whom Chairman Rawlings never got tired of characterizing as the most thoroughgoing corrupt postcolonial Ghanaian leader.

Mr. Rawlings, who had also once appointed John Mahama as his “Shit-Bombing” Communications Minister, also never got tired of telling the general Ghanaian public that absolutely under no circumstances could the former Ghana Airforce’s Fighter Pilot trust his former protégé and cabinet appointee. Equally significant for all registered and eligible Ghanaian voters to bear in mind is the fact that the unarguable vindication of the complete lack of trust and confidence in Candidate Mahama by Mr. Rawlings is eloquently attested by the fact that in the four-and-half years – that is, between July 2012 and January 2017 – that John Mahama held the democratic reins of governance, the former West-Gonja Member of Parliament, on the ticket of the present main opposition National Democratic Congress, did not initiate or establish a single significant or worthwhile major social-intervention project or program in the country.

And yet, the proverbial Mr. Naked would have Ghanaian voters suck up his drunken promise of establishing a 24-Hour Economy in the country. This is a kleptomaniacal and a kleptocratic criminal career politician who could not even turn on the lights for 24 Minutes and, instead, chose to cavalierly insult the intelligence of hardworking Ghanaian entrepreneurs contemptuously telling them to use “Your common sense to creatively run your businesses around the Dumsor timetable given you by my Power Minister.” Trust me, Dear Reader, absolutely no Fourth-Republican government could get worse or perform scandalous below the immeasurably incompetent performance level of the previous Stone-Age Mahama regime.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
April 27, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]