Bawumia Would Not Hold Kyerematen's Coattails, Trust Me!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 28, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

One Otchere-Darko (to be distinguished from the founder of the Danquah Institute) would have the world believe that yours truly is guilty of sacriliege for presuming to call the late President Kwame Nkrumah by his most appropriate honorific of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. For this reason, this woefully misguided Ghanaian citizen would have yours truly tutored in the language of decorum. Well, all I can do is to invoke the blessings of our luminary ancestors on Mr. Otchere-Darko in order for him to be able to learn something about the ways of the well-educated and honest. Well, it is not for nothing that I am fond of saying that not everybody is privileged enough to be the grandson of the Rev. Theodore Henry Yawbe Sintim-(Aboagye), of Akyem-Begoro, Asiakwa, Asante-Dwaben and Asante-Mampong.

But that is not what I want to discuss right now; rather, it is the unpardonably insolent idea that, somehow, having "run-mated" Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo twice before, now it is the turn of somebody called Alan Cash to "spare-tyre" Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for the same purpose, instead of having the latter deservedly gun for the presidency, once Nana Akufo-Akufo disengages himself from active national politics. (My profuse apologies to President John Dramani Mahama).

Let's get this arrant nonsensicality out of the way before it becomes an albatross around our necks and a self-fulfilling prophecy of the most horrific tenor. For the record: There will be no more bumbling "Afropean" Johns taking our country for a ride anytime soon. No more Jerry-the-Terribles, No more Evans-DoLittles, and no more Dramani-God-in-His-Infinite-Wisdoms.... That is, except for the Oxbridge-schooled one from Manhyia and Atwima-Nwabiagya, who fairly well distinguished himself during the eight years that he occupied the helm of our affairs, all the other three Johns produced by the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) have indisputably been apocalyptic failures. And it would be nothing short of the pathologically masochistic for anyone to think that Ghanaians have not learned any worthwhile lessons from the wanton socioeconomic, cultural and political destruction wreaked upon the pates of Ghanaians by the three NDC-Johns.

I also have absolutely no doubt in my mind that having partnered Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo through two controversial and hard-fought presidential elections, the astute and nimble Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is not going to accept the thankless role of a presidential spare-tyre - as Mr. Kufuor did to Alhaji Aliu Mahama, late - to unarguably the most conceited and narcissistic among the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidacy aspirants for Election 2016.

But even more significantly, the very notion of the former Deputy Bank of Ghana Governor taking dictation from an intellectual and professional adjunct like Mr. Kyerematen criminally breaches the merit-oriented leadership system, which is the hallmark of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition. It would be akin to stripping Dr. Bawumia of all his academic credentials and ordering him to start pre-kindergarten all over again. As far as most of us avid students and observers of New Patriotic Party politics are concerned, presently speaking, the Oxbridge- and Simon Fraser-educated scholar and practitioner of monetary economic policy has no peer among the members of his generation in the country. Don't we all want to put our best foot forward, at any rate?

Let's get this nonsense off our resumes/vitaes and unto the map of verifiable practical achievements. The fact of the matter is that far gone are the days when the size of one's ethnic or sub-ethnic group was reckoned as a factor of merit. Aside from Nana Akufo-Addo, who has been running on the strength of his verifiable legal and political achievements, none of the other presidential candidacy aspirants has any edge on Dr. Bawumia, when the latter's academic, professional and practical achievements are divided by his age.

Besides, the times in which we live are no accommodator of wishful thinkers and oneiric experimentation. Yes, a healthy dosage of visionary dreamfulness can produce miracles and often does, not the withered cassava dreams of vainglorious popinjays and panjandrums.

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