Yammin for Asante Region? Come On, Mr. Mahama! - Part 2

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
June 28, 2014

I personally believe that the globally embarrassing and widely reported fracas between the players of the Black Stars and the otiose number of officials who accompanied these players to Brazil, for the 2014 World Cup Tournament, had more to do with the perennially and chronically devious attempt by these officials to scam our players of their just deserts. We must also highlight the fact that this problem is in no way unique to Ghanaians.

It is fast shaping up to be a continental African problem; and I am almost quite certain that it exists, as well, outside the proverbial primeval continent, perhaps largely among many a Third-World nation. For, ever since this indisputably bad news hit the airwaves and made the newspaper banner headlines, we have also learned that the Green-Eagle players of Nigeria have also experienced a similar situation with their officials, which has prompted President Goodluck Jonathan to put through a passionately personal direct call to the Eagles with pretty much the same promises given the Black Stars by President Mahama.

Then also, we have just learned that the Cameroonians have equally been engulfed by flames of the same problem. And this may not be their first time. What also does not amuse me, not the least bit and not by any stretch of the imagination, is the patently quixotic decision by Messrs. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah and Joseph Yammin, Sports Minister and his deputy, respectively, to fly to Brazil the whopping sum of $3 million, in cash, on Ghana's presidential jet to settle the match-appearance debts owed these players. And equally embarrassing is to learn that the Brazilian government, going by the monetary rules of that country, has just caused a deduction of 17-percent from this inexcusably asinine decision to carry hard cash into the host country of the 2014 World Cup. What an indelible history of global self-humiliation!

Anyway, even as one grief-stricken FIFA official suggested, post facto, this transaction could have been more wisely executed by having the monies involved wired into the bank accounts of the aggrieved players, through the very common and widely accepted process of inter-bank transfers. This is also the safest way of modern business conduct over long distances.

Alas, it well appears that the key operatives of the Mahama government, including the President of Ghana himself, have yet to be brought into the modern world of banking. And, sorry to observe, these criminally benighted rascals are the people who would have Ghanaian voters believe that they are the best qualified people destined to bring high-end and high-tech development to their doorsteps. "Better Ghana Agenda," indeed!

Well, I will be discussing a plethora of other aspects of Ghana's 2014 Brasilia World Cup Debacle in due course. For now, however, I want to briefly touch on the rather half-hearted decision by President John Mahama to "reassign" Messrs. Afriyie Ankrah and Yammin, respectively, to the Presidency and as Deputy Asante Regional Minister.

It disturbingly appears that Mr. Mahama is far from ready to accept the fact that Messrs. Afriyie Ankrah and Yammin are decidedly not qualified to serve in the critical positions of cabinet appointees. The right decision, aptly and promptly suggested by the likes of Mr. Malik Kweku Baako, editor-publisher of the New Crusading Guide, would have been the outright dismissal of these two rascals from his government. Nevertheless, we ought to frankly admit, Mr. Mahama's decision to retain Mr. Afriyie Ankrah at the Presidency makes quite a bit of sense, if also because the "shuffled" Sports Minister laudably served as the then-Interim-President John Dramani Mahama's 2012 presidential campaign manager.

And on the preceding score, it goes without saying that Mr. Afriyie Ankrah did quite a heck of a yeoman's job in deftly collaborating with Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the aging and pathologically reprobate and cynical Electoral Commissioner, to scam Ghanaian voters at the polls. Of course, such feat could not have succeeded without both the tacit and overt complicity of Little Dramani. In other words, the reassignment of the Sports Minister to the Presidency may well shortly turn out to have been a blessing in disguise.

Besides, Mr. Mahama did not seem to have had much of a choice. The palpable and inexorable anger of the Ghanaian public, irrespective of political and/or ideological affiliation, was too intense and massive for the President to ignore, if he was to have any fighting chance at the 2016 presidential election.

On the other hand, the reassignment of Mr. Yammin, as Deputy Asante Regional Minister, is all the more bizarre and unpardonably insolent; unless, of course, Little Dramani took such a scandalous decision with the private approbation of Manhyia, being that Mr. Yammin has not, in the recent past, hesitated to publicly express his abject ill-will and immitigable contempt for the residents and natives of that region of the country.

Or maybe this is Mr. Mahama's way of thumbing his nose at the Asantes? Mr. Yammin is also one of those front-bench NDC operatives who firmly believe that so hateful are Asantes of the NDC government that no amount of development projects initiated and completed in the region is apt to make Asantes feel any modicum of gratitude towards the Mahama regime. And going by the sort of brazen identity politics that has come to characterize SADA, GYEEDA and SUBAH appointments, among a host of others, one would logically have expected the President to have posted Mr. Yammin, a self-confessed Nadowli native, from up-north, as a deputy minister to one of the three northern regions.

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