President Mahama Saved Himself!

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

It is rather lame-brained for Mr. Mahama Ayariga, the Minister for Information and Media Relations, to be bragging about the President's having opportunely resolved a problem created by Mr. John Dramani Mahama's own gross administrative incompetence (See "Prez Mahama Saved Ghana from Tribal Implosion - Ayariga" MyJoyOnline.com 1/7/14).

Indeed, were Mr. Ayariga an intelligent government operative, he would not have even fathomed exposing such an inexcusably embarrassing case of administrative incompetence to public scrutiny. Needless to say, in initially appointing regional ministers primarily on the basis of ethnicity and/or regions of birth, or origin, Mr. Mahama only flagrantly vindicated the well-founded suspicion of those of us avid students and observers of postcolonial Ghanaian politics, that the man was too ethnocentrically parochial to be an effective premier of Fourth-Republican Ghana.

He had already nauseatingly proven this much on his presidential campaign trail, when Mr. Mahama glibly and smugly told an audience of National Democratic Congress supporters and sympathizers that he was their only legitimate presidential candidate, primarily based on the fact that like most of them, he had also been born in the North. Thus shuffling his regional ministerial appointees around barely a month after the latter had assumed their respective portfolios, only clearly pointed to the fact that the President had not carefully thought through these very crucial appointments.

Indeed, had he been a studious statesman, or even a savvy politician, Mr. Mahama would have taken a cue from the government of the P/NDC-slain Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, the man who appointed regional commissioners primarily on the basis of the task at hand, and also on the basis of who best qualified to effectively tackle the same. Thus, for instance, Lt.-Col. Minyilah, a Northerner, was posted to the Eastern Region where he creditably acquitted himself as easily one of the best administrators in the junta of the National Redemption Council (NRC), subsequently renamed the Supreme Military Council (SMC-I).

As I have had occasion to observe, time and again, this vacuous self-preening story is one that can only pass muster before a brood of kindergarteners. It is the kind of cock-and-bull story that would inspire a stomach-motivated soldier to take up arms in order to unseat even the most democratically elected government of the day. Needless to say, if a man with the brain size of a chicken, such as Mr. Mahama Ayariga, is fully salaried as a substantive cabinet appointee, you can be certain that the acute socioeconomic problems plaguing the country are absolutely no happenstance, or accidents, at all. At best, they are accidents according to a viciously premeditated plan.

Then there is also this twaddle being bandied about, regarding a purportedly deft regional balance in President Mahama's cabinet and other executive appointments which, predictably, Mr. Ayariga also characterizes as "unprecedented" and "excellent." Maybe somebody much smarter and foresighted ought to bluntly let on to the Information Minister that administrative competence and results-oriented leadership trump the kind of lurid numbers game being played by Little Dramani and his visionless lickspittles and hangers-on.

If, indeed, President Mahama were even half as savvy as Mr. Ayariga would have the rest of us believe, why are virtually all his metropolitan, municipal and district chief-executive appointees being roundly rejected left and right, and back and front on a daily basis?

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Jan. 7, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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