John Mahama has absolutely no enviable reputation to protect

Mr. Kwame Baffoe, alias Abronye DC, is smack on target when he asserts that absolutely no amount or volume of high decibel of insults would stop the First Vice-Chairman of the Brong-Ahafo regional chapter of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) from exposing former President John Dramani Mahama for being the veritable and execrable political and administrative charlatan that Mr. Baffoe evidently believes the former Atta-Mills’ right-hand man to be (See “Insults Won’t Deter Me from Exposing You – Abronye to Mahama” Modernghana.com 3/30/19).

In his latest fracas with the former President, Mr. Baffoe claims that Mr. Mahama and his wife, Lordina, as well as several cabinet appointees of the former President, provided Ms. Joyce Dzidzor Mensah with fraudulent documents to enable the latter to be named an Ambassador of the Ghana Aids Commission. Currently, Ms. Dzidzor Mensah appears to be a fugitive being hunted for possible prosecution by operatives of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS). Mr. Baffoe claims that the former President has rented a plush apartment abroad where Ms. Dzidzor Mensah may be hiding.

As of this press preparation, the Office of the former President had issued a public statement, signed by Mrs. Joyce Bawa Motgari, Mr. Mahama’s paternal cousin, vehemently rejecting the allegation leveled against the former President by Mr. Baffoe. The latter has, in turn, roundly rejected the vitriolic attack on his character, reputation and credibility by citing some former Mahama regime executive operatives’ affirmation of Mr. Baffoe’s allegation impugning the credibility and integrity of the former Communications Minister under former President Jerry John Rawlings, including the very public assertion by a former Mahama diplomatic consul to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, to wit, Ambassador Osei, to the damnable effect that his former boss abjectly lacked the requisite reputation and competence to qualify Mr. Mahama to so facilely presume to gun for the Presidency for the second nonconsecutive time around.

Of course, Mr. Baffoe also has the incontrovertible evidence of the Mahama-Kanazoe Ford Expedition Payola Affair to further shore up his allegation vis-à-vis the high personal and professional tolerance for corruption, low reputation and credibility levels of the former President. It goes without saying that calling the young man popularly known as Abronye DC a “congenital liar,” as the Mahama spokeswoman did recently, is an extremely tough sell because Mr. Mahama has the lowest credibility rating among the five democratically elected Fourth-Republican Ghanaian presidents. Mr. Mahama is also widely known to be a scofflaw who once rode roughshod over a Wood Supreme Court Decision that resulted in the imprisonment of the three Mahama propaganda shills who became infamously known as the “Montie Three” or the “Montie Trio.” In the latter instance, Messrs. Alistair Tairo Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase – aka Mugabe – threatened to rape then-Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood and dismember or liquidate several of her associates on the Supreme Court of Ghana.

As well, asked by a BBC television reporter whether he had ever taken a bribe, the newly elected President Mahama, who seemed to be a little stultified and caught flatfooted by this rather terse but straight-forward question, densely demanded to know whether the aforesaid reporter’s question was in reference to the present or the period during which Mr. Mahama served as Vice-President and Arch-Lieutenant to then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late. This is clearly the tentative profile of a man who may not be self-assured in his own credibility and integrity. The Dzidzor Mensah issue has become especially significant because scarcely a couple of months ago, the wanted former Ghana Commission on Aids’ Ambassador went on-board a German passenger train and mockingly spoofed at President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s proposed construction of a multipurpose and cross- and interdenominational National Cathedral.

At least the latter incident seems to have clearly riled up the hackles of the Brong-Ahafo New Patriotic Party’s Vice-Chairman by forcing Abronye DC to go after Ms. Dzidzor Mensah and the former President. But, of course, the man who publicly and heartily celebrated the “mysterious” and tragic demise of the man who, literally, handpicked him for the Vice-Presidency as an auspicious act of an inscrutably wise Divine Providence has some real explaining to do before the Ghanaian public. In particular, then-Vice-President Mahama’s inescapably insensitive public jubilation over the fact of him becoming the first post-independence-born Ghanaian to either accede or succeed to the Presidency. Back then, I kept wondering whether such crass and gross display of primitive insensitivity was part of Gonja culture.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York