Opinions of Monday, 18 July 2016

Columnist: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr., Ph.D

Hajia Aisha Futa's backward thinking cannot win CPP power

Mr. Ernesto Yeboah and Ivor Greenstreet Mr. Ernesto Yeboah and Ivor Greenstreet

She says the indefinitely suspended National Youth Organizer of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP), Mr. Ernesto Yeboah, did not convene a meeting at party headquarters before presuming to drag President John Dramani Mahama before the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and so the petitioner cannot drag the name of the entire party into the fray

(See “Ford Gift Controversy: CPP Denies Dragging Mahama to CHRAJ” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/22/16).

This is quite a reasonable position to take because, after all, Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, the presidential candidate of the rump-CPP has categorically and publicly stated that the alleged decision by Mr. Mahama to accept the gift of a $100,000-worth Ford Expedition automobile from a Burkinabe national with whom the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was doing business does not sound and feel ethically inappropriate.

To be certain, Mr. Greenstreet has also gone on record as saying that any attempt by any Mahama critic to characterize the alleged gift as a payola or an act of bribery ought to be roundly condemned as downright preposterous. On the other hand, party stalwarts like Mr. Yeboah, the r-CPP National Youth Organizer, are convinced that the President’s decision to flout the government’s well-established ethical code of conduct makes his receipt of the Ford Expedition automobile a veritable act of bribery.

Now, what the Ghanaian public, in particular, the Ghanaian taxpayer, has a right to know is the extent to which the aforementioned gift may have cost our national treasury monies that could have been plowed into other national development projects.

We need to know, for example, the exact margin of profit ceded Mr. Gibril (or Djibril) Kanazoe that enabled him to afford the $100,000-gift allegedly given the then-Vice President Mahama.

Now Hajia Aisha Futa, the National Women’s Organizer of the rump-CPP says that since it appears that Mr. Mahama did not pass the Ford Expedition gift on to his family or place it among the fleet of vehicles belonging to the National Democratic Congress, the President Cannot be legally charged with bribery and corruption.

Now this is a very regressive trend of thinking because, ultimately, the issue at stake here regards the fact that President Mahama flagrantly violated his official code of ethics, one that was apparently authored by himself, which enjoins each and every one of his cabinet appointees and senior public servants never to accept any gifts valued at more than GH?200 or $50.

As I indicated in a previous column, accepting the Ford Expedition auto payola from Mr. Kanazoe was tantamount to Mr. Mahama’s having breached his own official code of conduct by at least 4,000 (Four-Thousand) percent.

Hajia Aisha Futa, the rump-CPP National Women’s Organizer, also says that the fact that legions of Ghanaian citizens, especially women, and children, can barely get one square meal a day ought not to give party stalwarts like Mr. Yeboah the luxury of pursuing a criminal case of bribery and corruption against President Mahama before CHRAJ.

This is a very strange way of thinking, for it clearly does not seem to occur to Hajia Futa that it is precisely because of such criminally wasteful misdeeds, such as the one alleged to have been committed by Mr. Mahama, that the nation is having such a hard time in generating adequate resources to enable it to take care of the most impoverished and vulnerable of our citizens.

Cast in simple terms, politicians like Mr. Yeboah seems to be serious about finding ways and means of bettering the living standards of the neediest of our citizens, whereas politicians like Hajia Futa are very busy helping crooked politicians like Mr. Mahama escape responsibility for their inexcusably inimical leadership conduct.