Murtala, This Is Sheer Poppycock!

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

Blaming the Election 2012 Presidential Petition for its abject, albeit predictable, failure to meet its target of building 50 senior high schools per year, over the course of the next four years, is President Mahama's latest clear signal to Ghanaians that he fully knows in his heart that he did not win last year's presidential election (See "Gov't Blames Akufo-Addo for Failure to Fulfill SHS Promise" TV3network.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/21/13).

What is more, Mr. Mahama had cabinet appointees in both the Ministry of Education, as well as the other cardinal ministerial portfolios, and so it is not as if he had to personally attend to all these laid-down policy agendas. In other words, what Mr. Mahama is saying is that in spite of his vehement insistence that he had won Election 2012 hands down, as New Yorkers are wont to say, nevertheless, as long as the Supreme Court was presiding over litigation proceedings, he did not feel confident and psychologically and politically secure enough to carry out his policy agenda.

If this observation holds water, as it were, then, obviously, it is highly unlikely for the President to effectively and successfully govern the nation during the next three years, since the Supreme Court's decision makes it inescapably clear that neither the presidential incumbent nor his main political opponent clinched the 50-percent of total votes cast necessary to command the mandate of the electorate.

In view of the preceding observations, it is very difficult to invest any remarkable modicum of credibility in Deputy Information Minister Murtala Ibrahim Mohammed's promise that the Mahama government is fully on course to fulfilling its policy agenda of building the aforesaid 200 senior high schools on schedule. One also begins to get even more worried, when Mr. Mohammed cynically trots in the rather lame analogy that "even in developed administrations, such as those in the U.S. and the U.K., targets are sometimes not met."

Maybe somebody ought to cite Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia's mantra of "monkeys playing by sizes" to alert the key players of the Mahama government to the fact of the imperative need to cutting their Batakaris (or Tunics) according to their sizes. What is important to observe here is not whether even the governments of advanced post-industrialized countries do miss policy targets, but rather the fact that countries like Ghana are finding it extremely difficult to catch up with these advanced economies. For instance, have smooth-talking Mahama operatives like Mr. Mohammed studied how those policy executors in the cited advanced countries make up for any shortfalls or missed policy targets? And the answer, of course, is bound to be a resounding "No!"

This is the crux of our leadership problem. It is also preposterous for people like the Mahama aide to expect Nana Akufo-Addo to have taken the kinds of gross and flagrant abuse of power visited on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) sitting down. Needless to say, Mr. Mohammed's kind of facile argument would make perfect sense, if we had not learned what we now know about what actually transpired during the course of Election 2012 between Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan and the various polling station agents and returning officers across the country, that is, the clearly criminal instances of over-voting and President Mahama's mischievous attempt to influence the outcome of the elections by ordering the Electoral Commissioner to allow prospective voters whose finger prints could not be biometrically verified to vote.

It is also rather silly to learn of the President's criss-crossing the Central Region to supposedly negotiate for lands on which to construct these direly needed senior high schools, when the Regional Minister and his/her representatives at the district and local levels could readily and more efficiently and cheaply have done the job. Come on, Mr. Murtala Ibrahim Mohammed, tell us something more meaningful and intelligent.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 21, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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