Mahama Ought to Have Distributed Coffins, Not Laptops, If...

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

At the recent enskinment of Alhaji Gibrine Ibrahim as Adansi Sarki Zongo, Ghana's Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Collins Dauda, was reported to have told spectators and audience members at the ceremony, held in Obuasi, that there was absolutely little that President John Dramani Mahama could do to stem the precipitous downward spiral of our national economy, because both "the Holy Bible and the Qur'an have predicted that we are at the end of time," a period characterized by acute economic hardship (See "NDC Minister: Mahama Can't Fix Economy.... These Are Signs of the End Times" Vibeghana.com 2/10/14).

My quarrel with this "latter-day revelation" by Alhaji Dauda regards why he had knowingly allowed his grandpaymaster, Mr. Mahama, to go ahead, in spite of the preceding revelation, to look Ghanaian voters straight in the face and lie to them, through his teeth, about his ability to improve the quality of their lives, knowing fully well that the country's steady economic decline had been preordained since ancient times by the two greatest scriptural tomes of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic majority populace of the country. Or, is the Water Resources, Works and Housing Minister also implying that wickedly lying their way to power has as well been preordained by both the Holy Bible and the Muslim Qur'an?

And if, indeed, Ghanaians are inevitably and immutably caught up in the terminal maelstrom of time, as it were, then why had President Mahama and his cronies and political associates desperately resorted to distributing laptop computers to students and pupils, and even some selected media operatives, in the heated lead-up to Election 2012, instead of savvily distributing caskets, or coffins, to enable Ghanaians successfully transition into the inevitable afterlife at a remarkably abated cost to their relatives, friends and sympathizers?

And, also, just what business does Alhaji Dauda have holding a cardinal cabinet portfolio whose challenges he clearly seems to be incapable of negotiating, being that the man eerily appears to possess neither the requisite intellectual capacity nor the creative and innovative initiatives demanded by the job?

It is also rather contradictorily farcical, to speak much less about the downright oxymoronic, for Alhaji Dauda to facilely presume to play "prophetic" games with the inexcusably gross managerial incompetence of the Mahama-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), while simultaneously accusing critics of the government who have themselves been a part of previous administrations of abject hypocrisy. The fact of the matter is that almost every operative of the Mahama government who is more than forty years old has served in previous P/NDC-run regimes that have dominated the country's political landscape during the past three-and-half decades.

In sum, other than the relatively brief, albeit quite successful, eight-year period during which the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) auspiciously occupied the helm of our national affairs, the overwhelming bulk of the staggering socioeconomic mess bedevilling the country, presently, was unarguably created by the perennially and pathologically unconscionable Rawlings posse.

That Ghanaians must, by now, be sick and tired of the cant and chicanery that have effectively taken grips of the modus operandi of the so-called National Democratic Congress cannot be gainsaid. What is puzzling, however, is the virtual passivity and the morally flabbergasting resignation with which the proverbial Ghanaian taxpayer continues to equanimously accommodate the theft- and scandal-prone rascally operatives of the so-called Better Ghana Agenda.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 13, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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