Candidate Opoku-Agyemang’s Cheap, Populist Talk Was Nothing Short of Embarrassing – Part 3

It constitutes the very height of arrogance for Candidate Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the 2020 and the 2024 Presidential Running-Mate of the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “Akonfem-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama, to casually suppose that the gross incompetence of the previous Mahama regime (2012-2017), that largely plunged Ghana into the gaping economic abyss in which Ghanaians presently find ourselves could easily and facilely be forgotten merely because the country, under the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is on the cusp of a major fiscal crisis. No such wishful thinking could be at once more treasonably irresponsible and criminally unconscionable (See “[Full text] Acceptance speech by Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang as 2024 NDC Running Mate” Modernghana.com 4/24/24).

Now, on the much-touted subject of “State Capture,” who has so soon and suddenly forgotten a seismically trounced Candidate Mahama desperately demanding to be “compensated” for his gross administrative and governance incompetence by being gifted the official residence of the Vice-President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, the very same residence that had been previously occupied by the late former Vice-President Aliu Mahama for some eight of the most progressive years in our Fourth Republican socioeconomic Golden Years? Now, if this is not the mindset of a typical kleptocratic and kleptomaniacal, State-Capturing politician, what else is it, if one may humbly be permitted to ask the Dear Reader?

And yet, in her afore-referenced Speech-of-Acceptance to partner Candidate John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama into Ghana’s 2024 Presidential Election, we have a suavely mendacious and truth-bereft Candidate Opoku-Agyemang sarcastically and virulently accusing the operatives of the twice-elected Akufo-Addo government of colluding with the National Security Establishment to bribe the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters into silence, while the Akyem Mafia, so-called, wantonly fleeced the country of its resources.

So, maybe somebody needs to critically inform the Elmina native, from the Central Region, that it was one of her own clansmen by the name of Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, late, who, according to Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, the former Atta-Mills’ Presidential Running-Mate and, subsequently, the Atta-Mills-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, conspired and colluded with Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, also a former Atta-Mills-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, to literally lift the Alfred Agbesi Woyome-fronted GH₡51.2 million from our National Treasury, to wit, the Bank of Ghana, at the expense of hardworking and woefully underpaid Ghanaian workers and taxpayers.

On the latter count ought to be neatly and meticulously differentiated the stark difference between stealing and criminal embezzlement, on the one hand, and the official misappropriation of public funds or taxpayer money on a nonpersonal basis, on the other. And for the avoidance of any iota or shadow of a doubt, Naana Opoku-Agyemang must also be told right upfront that there is absolutely no justification, whatsoever, for the man whose first and foremost reason for desperately wanting to be returned to Jubilee for a second and another clearly undeserved four protracted years, so that “I can correct my past mistakes” to be gunning for the Presidency the fourth time around, almost as if Ghanaians were completely bereft of any better qualified and more talented leaders.

As we have already critically observed innumerable times in previous discussions of this topic, that the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, and now his stereotypical sidekick and speechwriter as well, need to be sternly and soberly informed that the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters do not have any desire or appetite, whatsoever, to be returned to the “mistake-fraught” past of an emotionally diapered and an intellectually retarded mediocre – actually third-rate – politician who believes that, somehow, he is the center and the cosmic anchor of the lives and the destinies of the Ghanaian people. God-Allah forbid!

Now, on a more serious note must be pointedly observed that there is absolutely no mistakes worthy of being rectified by a morbidly self-infatuated Candidate Mahama that have not already been corrected and done and over with far better by the twice-elected President Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Mahama, the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party. Besides, even as we demanded to be informed in several of our previous discussions, does returning to Jubilee house to correct his past mistakes also entail the resurrection of all the people who needlessly perished or lost their lives as a direct result of the criminal negligence and the gross administrative incompetence of Yagbonwura Okogufuo Kwame Gonja, such as the callous and the unconscionable bankrupting of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-implemented National Health Insurance Schene (NHIS) and LEAP, to name or list only a couple of the uniquely implemented social-intervention initiatives by the New Patriotic Party-sponsored Fourth-Republican governments?

Heading into the watershed 2024 General Election, in particular the 2024 Presidential Election, there should be absolutely no doubt in the mind of any civically responsible Ghanaian citizen that the preceding is clearly the politically stale and the morally rancid agenda of a clinically demented man in dire and immediate need of psychiatric examination and treatment, and definitely not one with any serious or politically and morally justifiable cause for being returned to Jubilee House, contrary to what a politically inebriate Candidate Naana Opoku-Agyemang would have the rest of her countrywomen and countrymen believe.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
May 1, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]