We saw 'bastardised' Mahama as 'worst vampire' but Akufo-Addo has made him look like a saint – Kpebu

President Nana Akufo-Addo has demonstrated that he is “not up to the task” and, as a consequence, made former President John Mahama, who was seen as “the worst” President in Ghana’s history, look like a “saint”, private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu has said.

Speaking on Accra-based Joy FM’s Saturday news analysis programme, Newsfile, hosted by Samson Lardi Anyenini on 16 July 2022, Mr Kpebu said it was high time Ghanaians expressed their anger at the President for failing to live up to the expectations of the citizens, given how he led the then-opposition New Patriotic Party to caricature Mr Mahama in the lead-up to the 2016 general elections.

In Mr Kpebu’s view, just as the government recently made a U-turn on its earlier insistence to never go back to the International Monetary Fund for an economic programme to lift the country out of her economic doldrums, so must Ghanaians, who, once had so much trust in Mr Akufo-Addo and his government but have been disappointed by his performance in office, express their anger at him.

“We just have to come together; let’s have more demonstrations”, the lawyer suggested, observing: “The truth is that we’ve not shown much anger and the reason some are finding it difficult to show that much anger is because we bastardised JM: we thought JM was the worst, the vampire we had never seen in our history and that would be the last, so, you talk to people who are even on this side of government and they are like: ‘I mean we can’t believe it. We drove out JM and, now, through the president’s lack of willpower to fight corruption and all the other things, including bathing in the skies, he has resurrected JM, making JM look like a saint”.

So, he added, “When you talk to people behind the scenes, what they do is that they find it difficult to eat back their own words because we had said so much against JM thinking that ‘The Messiah’ – Akufo-Addo – has arrived”.

“Just like the way we had to eat humble pie and go back to the IMF, I entreat citizens to come together and show more anger”, he urged.

“We should let it be known to Akufo-Addo that: 'Look, we voted for you!' – I used to support him, I supported him, I just thought that he was the solution to all of our problems – so, we should make it clear to him that he’s been very wrong, he’s not up to the task, and, so, maybe he can even leave earlier”, Mr Kpebu noted.

As far as he is concerned, “nothing stops” the President “from resigning today, because after climbing the moral high horse: ‘John Mahama cannot teach me how to keep the public purse’, today, I’m sure the jury is out”.

“We can compare”, he pointed out, insisting: “It’s public anger that we have to show”.

He said, “those who are thinking that by coming out to show public anger, they are strengthening John Mahama’s [chances], don’t look at it that way”, explaining: “It’s not automatic that if we boot Akufo-Addo out, John Mahama should automatically come in. No”.

“Something else can happen; we call it ‘shaking the kaleidoscope’. You shake it, you don’t know what will come out. Maybe, a messiah could come out different from John Mahama”, he argued.