Akufo-Addo’s Strategy Backfires

It is now as clear as daylight that the strategy employed by the Presidential candidate of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo and his campaign team to fight off allegations of cocaine sniffing and wee smoking has backfired badly.

Obviously, a two-pronged approach was adopted to repair the damage that continues to be done to the Presidential candidate’s image as a result of allegations of cocaine sniffing and wee smoking that have been made against him.

The first involved putting the fear of God into those seen as fuelling the allegations and secondly, smearing President Mills to the extent that members of the NDC and pro-NDC media would ceasefire on Akufo-Addo.

The first strategy was a non-starter because the accusations originated from within the NPP itself; the only thing those who are seen to be fuelling the allegations are doing is their frequent call on the NPP Presidential candidate to deny the allegations and prove he is clean or confirm it and explain how he is cleaning up.

The second strategy which involves smearing President Mills has also backfired because the President, in the run-up to the 2008 elections, answered his critics, proved that he was not dead and that he was mentally and physically 100% sound when they accused him of being sick and later claimed he was dead.

It was based on the clean bill of health Ghanaians gave him that they employed him to be the President of Ghana.

Since then, he has not let them down. From addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations as well as the African Union to presiding over the affairs of the state which includes acting on security briefs, President Mills continues to prove the cynics in opposition wrong.

His ability to read his speeches extempore on many occasions shows how razor sharp his mind is.

Unfortunately for Nana Akufo-Addo, not only has his strategy to quench the cocaine and wee inferno backfired but the onus still lies on him to prove to Ghanaians that he does not sniff cocaine nor smoke wee.

The odyssey of former Panamanian Head of State, Manuel Noriega for dabbling in illicit drugs and the violence that is engulfing Mexico as a state as a result of the activities of drug cartels are enough reasons for Ghanaians not to want a President to be remotely connected to illicit drugs as a junkie, a trafficker or a baron.

More importantly, Ghanaians want to be sure that the man who is presiding over the affairs of the state and who sometimes may have to declare war or refuse to declare same is of sound mind every second of the day and night throughout his tenure of office.