Wontumi’s carp against Mahama must not be lightly dismissed – Part 1

Ordinarily, I would not be weighing in on the fracas presently brewing between the 2020 John Dramani Mahama Presidential Campaign and the Asante Regional Branch of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), on the one hand, and the visionary, dynamic and inimitably progressive Asante Regional Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “Re: You Are a Corrupt Thief Just Like Your Father – Wontumi Punches Mahama [Rejoinder]” Modernghana.com 4/15/19). Unfortunately, I have been forced to weigh in on this fray, in particular, because the aforementioned rejoinder, which is signed by somebody called Mr. Abass Nurudeen, who also describes himself as the “Regional Communications Officer of the Asante Regional NDC,” flagrantly attempts to irresponsibly tag President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo with the spurious epithet of a “liar,” a political tag which even any 4-year-old Ghanaian toddler knows has long been patented, and been globally recognized as such, by former President John Dramani Mahama.

After all, who, in Ghana, is not well aware of the fact that Mr. Mahama initially strenuously denied ever having solicited a bribe in the form of an American-made Ford Expedition SUV, until faced with concrete evidence of his official act of criminality, he sheepishly owned up to the fact of having, indeed, solicited and received the Ford Expedition Payola from the Burkinabe contractor and businessman man by the name of Monsieur Jibril (Djibril) Kanazoe? We may never know how much in inflated contractual concession this payola cost the Ghanaian taxpayer. If Mr. Nurudeen does not appreciate this glaring fact, then let him rest assured that using the name of the good people and great citizens of the august Democratic Republic of Ghana, privately and secretly, without our knowledge, as well as the apparent knowledge of then-Vice-President Mahama’s immediate boss, to wit, then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, was inescapably tantamount to thievery of the highest order.

We must also quickly point out that then Vice-President Mahama had used another individual’s name to clear the Ford Expedition SUV from Tema Harbor, which clearly indicates that, indeed, Mr. Mahama intended to steal from and in the name of the honorable, hardworking and forward-looking Ghanaian people. He would later foolishly claim that he did not even like American cars, that his preference in cars was Japanese. In sum, rather than quixotically gunning for the Presidency, two years after he had been wisely and convincingly unseated from power with more than One-Million Votes by the Ghanaian electorate, Mr. Mahama ought to have been serving a prison sentence with hard labor. Well, Mr. Nurudeen further backs up the accusation by Chairman Wontumi, when the NDC’s Asante Regional Communications Officer says that Mr. Mahama, according to our Fourth-Republican Constitution, is due to lose his immunity from prosecution come December 7, 2020, which actually explains why the former West-Gonja NDC’s Member of Parliament has been desperately fighting to be returned to power exactly on the aforesaid date.

Now, let us examine what Mr. Abass Nurudeen farcically claims to be the “reckless talk” that has become the “staple strategy” of some key operatives of a supposedly failing Akufo-Addo Administration. You see, the idea of former President Mahama’s father having been a political robber-baron or an incurably thievish politician, was first raised by a Mahama family member, to wit, the younger brother of the late Mr. Emmanuel Adama Mahama. It was this Mahama kinsman who, in the hectic runup to the 2016 Presidential Election, virulently, vitriolically and shamefully accused Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia, the late revered father of Ghana’s present Vice-President, Alhaji-Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, of having maligned and/or backbitten Mr. Adama Mahama to then President Kwame Nkrumah, to the damnable effect that Mr. Adama Mahama, then the Northern Regional Minister, had been nepotistic by diverting taxpayer-underwritten development resources meant for the development of the entire Northern Region to his hometown of Bole or some such township.

The irony here, though, was that the Mahama critic uncle who had presumed to so self-righteously humiliate and ruin the reputation and integrity of Vice-President Bawumia, as well as blisteringly dishonor the hallowed memory of Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia, ended up almost immediately contradicting himself by unwittingly confessing by boasting that in those days when Mr. Adama was the Northern Regional Minister and the most powerful politician in the North, the only township or city that was better developed than Bole was the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale. So, wherein lay the scandalous mendacity of Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia’s alleged accusation that Minister Adama Mahama was a flagrantly nepotistic or tribalistic leader who only looked towards the interests and aspirations of his tribesmen and clans women?

At any rate, the Mahama uncle who so outrageously lit into the integrity of the Bawumia Family would shortly and conciliatorily apologize for his patently inadvisable tirade, which may very well have worsened the already precarious situation and performance record of then-President Mahama, heading into Election 2016.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York