NANA AKUFO ADDO: An indestructible name

Nay, would I were so angered with same

O! hateful hands to tear such loving words

Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey

And kill the bees that yield it with your stings

I’ll kiss each several paper for amends.

A few weeks back when I was putting the plight of my Regional Hospital to the fore, I had stated that I had been the guest of any health facility in my life only twice, one in 1968 and the other in 1988.

The first one was at the Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital and the second time at the Takoradi Hospital which used to be called European Hospital. It seems the hospitals were angry that I have not been a regular in-house guest of their facilities and so they conspired to invite me to one of their facilities.

On Friday, April 15, 2016, a deadly attack on my body after a few days of malaria sent me sprawling twice in my home recording a cut at the hind head and virtually becoming helpless and useless with my body.

I was rushed to the GHAPOHA Hospital where I was detained for almost 48 hours and treated and discharged. Tons of thanks to the staff of the hospital whose prompt attention and care gave me back my life. Dear reader, if you missed this column for two consecutive weeks, the frailties in me gave way.

I am now better, within the period in question, so many things have happened worthy of my opinions in this column, however, I wish to deal with the desperate NDC activists and Ministers who have made it a case to pour every unfortunate incident in the NPP on the shoulders of the flagbearer.

Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo has been associated with all manner of bad things that have not been proven by his accusers. Each time any of these childish and fraudulent political accusations by the NDC failed to fly, they move from their hold to another hoping to get Ghanaians to believe the negative things they say about this distinguished son of Ghana. Over the past few months, the NDCs manifesto to the public is that Nana Addo is a violent person. The NDC has no message of achievements to the good people of Ghana and therefore resort to intangible but emotive accusations against Nana Addo.

Ever since the very unfortunate but paid incidences and conflicts began at the NPP party Headquarters, with its sad consequences of loss of two very precious lives, the warped minds in the NDC who have financed some of these conflicts in the NPP and continue to do so want to push the happenings in the party to Nana Addo and brand him as a violent person.

Nana Addo as a young man stood up against authoritarianism in the 1970s which eventually opened up the nation to the Third Republican Constitution which was aborted by their mentor Jerry John Rawlings.

In 1995, when economic hardships had dwarfed the nation, Nana Addo and a few dedicated sons and daughters of this country organized Ghanaians to protest and get the deadly VAT rate of 17% at the time withdrawn and reduced subsequently to 10% by the NDC administration. Is that what makes him a violent person? Now what is the definition of ‘violent’ in modern context.

Johan Galtung (1969) defines violence as ‘that which causes people’s actual physical and mental realizations or accomplishments to fall short of their potential physical and mental realizations’. Sharp also defines violence as intentionally causing someone physical injury, a position seen as too narrow by other critics.

Ghandi, according to Pontara, (1965), saw violence as the ‘willful use of power to force a change in another’s behavior in such a way that the opponent is physically or psychologically harmed.’ Ghandi adds, according to Pontara, ‘violence is a moral evil which includes corruption, falsehood, hypocrisy, deceit and the like. Ghandi indeed even says lying is a form of violence.

With the above definitions of violence, who in modern day socio-political and economic environment is inflicting violence on the people of this country? This country under John Mahama has inflicted incurable violence on Ghanaians and rendered majority of the people of this country useless.

Under Mahama, cost of living in this country has risen to levels very much unprecedented in the history of this country. The psychological torture that parents and the youth go through on a daily basis in their quest to make a living is characterized by officially sponsored violence.

Economic mismanagement and open thievery of public resources by government officials and their agents deprive the citizenry of resources which under normal circumstances should go into developing and offering opportunities for the populace to identify their potentials and build upon them for their individual benefit and the collective interest of the nation. Mahama has violently denied Ghanaians through his negative policies in the management of this great nation of ours.

Mahama has used the powers of state to inflict violence which has eroded the pride and self- confidence of the Ghanaian, corruption, falsehood, hypocrisy, deceit and outright lies are the violent tools in the hands of Mahama and his blockheaded cohorts who in the absence of any reasonable message to the electorate have resorted to emotive use and description of Nana Addo as a violent person when none of the above definitions of violence can be found in the man destined to offer this country a unique leadership to it forward.

It is an undeniable fact that the NDC government led by Mahama has an unenviable record of being the most corrupt regime this country has had the misfortune of having produced by default. It is a government founded on deceit and falsehood, hypocrisy and unadulterated lies told with vigour and finesse to the unsuspecting listeners. Sometimes, even the suspicious listeners may be tempted to believe the lies because of the style and manner of presentation of those lies.

What more violence can anybody inflict on a people than to recruit professionals and assign them tasks to perform which they do religiously and for years are not paid until they put their pride and ethics aside, demonstrate to government offices before they get paid? What is more violent than to train middle level personnel at huge costs to the nation and to the trainees themselves, bond them to be loyal to the state for a stated period of time and yet the government refuses to honour its side of the bond agreement while still confining the trainees to waiting endlessly without the opportunity to extricate themselves from the bond and free themselves into another world of survival?

Young men and women of honour and pride, with aspirations into the future, have persistently and consistently been reduced to street agitators just to have them offered jobs as agreed upon by the state prior to or in the course of their training. What is more violent than this blatant display of disrespect and disregard for the youth of this nation than Mahama’s policy of ‘die and let’s live’?

In the desperation of these inhuman and callous desperados of our times, the coercive force of the state are being employed to solicit acquiescence of the citizenry to become partners of illegality and foolishness in the scheme of affairs.

This country has gone through worse state of the coercive use of state apparatus to elicit submissive obeisance to the incompetent and desperate despots who lack the confidence in knowing and doing what was right.

Our fathers and mothers resisted with their liberties, freedoms, their rights and finally with their lives to ensure that we have a Ghana whose motto of ‘Freedom and Justice’ is not just written to fill a space but seen to be enforced. If it has come to our turn to fight the terror of a modern despot dressed in democratic borrowed robes, we shall not disappoint our forefathers.

The Bureau of National Impunity (BNI) can continue to detain innocent people in their yards to show them where power lies, but Ghanaians will not succumb to the fascist style being employed to kill dissent in our body politics. Nana Akufo Addo certainly, Insha Allah will be the next PRESIDENT of Ghana.