Clueless Mahama: From “Sakawa” to Free Education

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, PhD

I don’t know what the NPP is doing about Mahama’s pitching of Akufo-Addo’s free education. Mahama may be clueless when it comes to governing or honoring hundreds of promises, but he knows how to take the wind out of the sail of the NPP. I predict that the pathological passivity of the NPP will confine them to the political wilderness for years to come. The NDC is good at propaganda, for example, the notion that the NPP is an Akyem-Asante party, has been bought by some constituencies. Endemic “tribalism” and pervasive illiteracy in Ghana make it easy to retail propaganda without any political cost. It is about time the NPP leaders mount a platform to counter NDC’s strategic political engineering, one of which is Mahama’s attempt to surrogate a political baby – free education - he had recklessly disowned. The NDC operatives are making a case that free education is a constitutional provision. That being the case, why did Mahama oppose it, was he against the constitution then, and if so what has changed? The second argument, and Mahama has made it, is that no one has patented free education. Granted that is the case, it tells us that Mahama is shifty and not grounded in core ideological principles. We Ghanaians like to imitate everything Western. If Mahama had been an American politician, his shameful latching onto the very ideas of his political opponent that he had publicly ridiculed and vigorously denounced would have been his political undoing. Then again, Ghanaians are so burdened with economic hardships and social malaise to the extent that “enye hwee,” “make you no worry,” “fama Nyame,” etc.” have become democratized national syndromes. The educated middle class that can save the masses are enjoying the pen-armed robber politics of the political elites and could care less. The masses have to rise up to claim their political space in the marginalizing grip of Mahama’s wanton promises none of which has been fulfilled.

“President John Dramani Mahama, flagbearer for the ruling NDC has urged his supporters to forget about Nana Addo’s ‘free educations’ mantra. ‘Because he [Nana Addo] wants power, he is preaching free education, but I say it is ‘sakawa’ and shouldn’t be trusted,’ President Mahama said” (Abridged from Ghanaweb, November 29, 2012)

“President John Dramani Mahama has announced the preparation of government to implement a free secondary education programme which is part of the national education policy of Ghana.
Mahama had free education” (Ghanaweb, February 25, 2014)

We see Mahama imploding
Atuguba’s historicizing has come full circle
About our quotidian struggles
About our archives of pain
About dreams deferred, detained
Mahama is brimming with hubris
Like a satisfied vulture in flight
Over carcasses of preyed history
Mahama has no message
No platform
No ideology
No principle
Mahama is lies in flight
Mahama’s filthy education
Not Akufo-Addo’s free education

Mahama is a “stealer”
John Mahama is at it again
Chirping as usual like akomfem
Tweaa President of promises
Seasons of anomic promises
Has a new promise of theft
Mahama has stolen from Akufo-Addo
Akufo-Addo’s free education
When it suited Mahama he chirped
He called free education sakawa
Free education for both North & South
Today Mahama is like an akomfem
Flight of promises in space
Ghanaians let us unclench truth
Let us speak truth to power
Those who bait us
Let us unclench our fists of truth
Daughters and sons of the South
You need free education
As much as the North does
Daughters and sons of the South
Summon history as meditation, guidance

Akufo-Addo’s free education
Mahama said it was sakawa
Akufo-Addo’s free education
Sakawa that had benefited Mahama
That Northerners are enjoying
That has made the Iddrisus
That has made the Ayarigas
That has made the Bagbins
That has made the Apaks
That has made the Atugubas
The Northern elites
The corrupt architects
Of SADA
Of Akonfem
Of GYEEDA
What Mahama must call sakawa
Not Akufo-Addo’s free education
Today Mahama has stolen it
Sakawa free education

Mahama had free education
Cruelly parodied it as sakawa
Mahama’s visionary injunction
His seductive narrative
His evocative ingratitude
His deceitful declaration
Free education was sakawa
Nkrumah’s free education
That rescued Northerners
From savage stereotyping
The watchmen
The farm laborers
The washermen
The buga buga police
The carriers of night soil
Ah! Glorious night soil
Ah! Nkrumah’s free education
Brimming with hubris
Mahama called it sakawa

Daughters & sons of the South
Time to summon history
History as meditation
History as science
History as a bridge
Between the North and South
Of Nkrumah’s free education
That has made the Mahamas
Presidents
Vice presidents
Ministers of state
Tractor-thieves
Let us summon history
To speak to free education
Not Mahama’s foul education
Yes, Akufo-Addo’s free education

*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at [email protected]. My poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or scholarly work without my written permission.