Advisory open letter to the First & Second Ladies of Ghana

Dear Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo & Mrs Samira Bawumia,

It is a pleasure to have you, Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo and Mrs Samira Bawumia, as the current Ghana's First Lady and Second Lady respectively. You are presently in your raised status, looked up to, or viewed, as the mothers to every Ghanaian.

As a mother will advise her children to be good, aspire to attain the best for themselves, be caring, respectful and law-abiding, so will a sensible child do, or expect same, for his/her mother. It is with this belief that I have decided as your son, to write to give you advice in case you would find them useful throughout the entire period you will spend as the First and Second Ladies of Ghana.

Wisdom is not the prerogative of any one single person and neither does it reside with only those well-advanced in age, thus, the elderly. As old age is said not to be an indication of wisdom although it comes with rich life experiences same as grey hair is not a repository of wisdom, I consider myself to be in a position to be able to part with some useful life experiences to you despite my age.

You are in a very delicate position vis-Ã -vis the unique personalities of your husbands; incorruptible, dynamic, honest, farsighted with determined resolution to be of selfless service to their people and nation and the temptations by their adversaries and certain selfish people to get them go off on a tangent.

Behind every successful man there is a woman, so a widely accepted idiomatic expression goes. What about behind a failed man, is there a woman or not? There could likely be a woman but who failed to advise her husband in the most sensible way, or failed to perform her marital and other related obligations to catapult the husband into would-be envious heights.

Your husbands can only succeed in their utopian aims if you share the same selfless aspirations devoid of love for materialism, with them. They want to render sincere service to their people and nation without resort to any practices of corruption of any shape or form. You are very much aware of this.

From their known past, present and ongoing public track records, your two husbands, His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo and His Excellency Vice President Dr Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, are without blemish. With their strength of character and how they prefer good name to riches acquired illegally, nobody, I repeat, nobody can unduly influence them to do the unthinkable.

However, coming back to life experiences, your husbands can be induced to do the contrary by you as wives putting undue pressure on them as may be instigated by their adversaries or people seeking their downfall or failure as the acclaimed incorruptible persons. This is what I want you to guard yourselves against and be as wise as the serpent to detect any such evil ploys by their enemies.

Did God not have a noble plan and purpose for Adam, the first created human being on earth according to the bible? Was it not a woman, his wife Eve, to be very precise, who through the evil machinations of the serpent (devil) incurred the wrath of God upon Adam through an act of disobedience? Read Genesis chapter 3.

Again, when you read the bible in Judges 16 about Samson and Delilah, was it not through love for, deceit and persuasion by, a woman, Delilah of course, that cost Samson his strength and eventual death at the hands of the rulers of the Philistines?

For love of a woman, a man can do anything which he may later regret in life.

Coming back to our own present era, and especially with our Ghanaian women, there are known occasions where they have used sex as an effective luring weapon to get their husbands to do whatever they, the women, wanted. A man becomes the weaker sex partner in times of great incentivized urge to make love to his wife or girlfriend but with the wife or girlfriend refusing to yield in. The woman is withholding sex from him, using the instance as a perfect occasion to get the man to grant her wishes, whatever they may be.

I am not going into the details but these happen a lot among our Ghanaian women who at any least or no provocations at all from their husbands, but for their selfish intents, do wear tight knickers into bed just to deny their husbands some momentary libidinal satisfaction. Such attitudes can result in anything, anyhow.

I shall advise that our First and Second Ladies do not resort to any such actions as may be instigated by those seeking the failure of their husbands, having baited them with promises, heavy money bribes etc., to corrupt them, but will rather stand solidly behind their husbands in pursuit of their noble dreams for the collective benefit of the entire Ghanaian population.

As your husbands are aspiring to judiciously jealously protect their distinguished characters, I shall only pray that you give them your fullest support. Do not allow anyone to induce you with material wealth to sabotage your husbands.

Your husbands can only keep the NDC in opposition longer if and only if, you will give them the needed moral, physical and honest support in their drive to liberate Ghanaians from their economic hardships. You are rather to redirect their steps, keep them on their toes, keep on reminding them of their promises to the Ghanaian people when you find them to be straying from the good path.

It is alleged that the recent past First Lady, Mrs Lordina Mahama, was so greedy that she could go to the Tema harbour, seize some cars belonging to some importers who had not been able to meet the Customs and Excise duties imposed on them, to sell them cheaper to, or distribute them among, her cronies. As greedy and corrupt as she allegedly was, so did her husband, former President Mahama become, hence plunging the country into unprecedented external debt, institutional corruption and chaotic lawlessness where members of the NDC could get away with blue murder. In the end, they were disgracefully relieved of their posts through the power of the electorates’ thumbs at Election 2016.

Former First Lady Naadu Mills was not known or heard to be corrupt; however, she did not stand solidly behind her husband, the late President Evans Fiifi Atta Mills as it was expected of any serious First Lady. This unsupportive action by her partly culminated in President Mills’ government appointees taking advantage of him to engage in corrupt practices with impunity; and finally, his mysteriously shameful and unexplained death.

I want both of you to be different from the two mentioned previous First Ladies. Stand solidly behind your husbands to help them achieve their noble promises to Ghanaians. Do not allow the devil to tempt you to bring them down as happened in the cases of Adam and Samson.

The devil may influence you through various ways. People may come to you with money offers and other gifts with or without any explained ulterior motives, but to get your husbands do their bidding. People may lobby you to put pressure on your husbands to give them government contracts or positions in their government. Friends and family members may require you to get your husbands to see them in better light, treating them more equal than others.

Once you fall victims to such ungodly persuasions and influences, then you have unconsciously charted the course for the beginning of the end of your husbands reign.

A word to the wise is enough. As God has given advisory wisdom to me, the son of Kumawu/Asiampa freely, so shall I allow you to drink freely from my overflowing fountain of wisdom!

You are not in anyway compelled to listen to my admonition, but I feel if you do see the sense in my advice and take to it, it shall be helpful to you today, tomorrow, and many more years to come. This reminds me of a book or a story I read in my primary school years in the 1960s titled, “You will remember me”

This letter to you may be my last on expressing my candid opinions about, or offering advice on, how best His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, can achieve his manifesto policies as promised to Ghanaians. I shall be writing about other non political issues of equally vital interest and importance to me.

Yours Sincerely,

Rockson Adofo

(Dated: Friday 20 January 2017)