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

After pooh-poohing the economic feasibility of providing all Ghanaian youths with a fee-free Senior High School education, in the heat of the 2012 presidential campaign, Mr. John Dramani Mahama now claims that Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution stipulates the progressive implementation of a fee-free education (See "Akufo-Addo Doesn't Own Free SHS Copyright - Mahama" Radioxyzonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/1/14).

The leader of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is also now claiming that the very notion of providing our youths with a fee-free Senior High School education "has not been copyrighted by the Registrar General's Department." That he made the promise of implementing his fee-free SHS educational program while on a two-day working tour of the Central Region, ought to give his audiences a pause to ponder the value of his credibility. But even more significantly, the President's intention to rolling out his fee-free Senior High School educational program in the lead-up to Election 2016, ought to be pointedly regarded by all well-meaning Ghanaian citizens as an inexcusable insult to our intelligence.

It clearly implies that Mr. Mahama is only prepared to execute the projects for which he was elected in exchange for votes. The obverse of such cynical and cheeky logic is, of course, that once he has been returned to the seat of governance for the second time, come Election 2016, and has been effectively rendered a lame-dock president by the constitutionally stipulated time limit, Mr. Mahama is highly unlikely to assiduously work for the attainment of other equally significant projects /programs aimed at the long-term development of the country.

He is absolutely correct to say that no Ghanaian leader or politician wields a monopoly over the conception and execution of projects deemed to be geared towards the collective improvement of the citizenry at large. But what he cannot deny or publicly protest and get away with is the documentary evidence of his bold-faced lies. Much would also depend on the extent to which he would have been able to achieve his publicly stated agenda in this sphere of our national endeavor in the lead-up to Election 2016.

None of us need to nurse any headaches over the largely toothless promises of Mr. Mahama's. Recently, for instance, one of his very discerning critics nicknamed the former NDC-MP from Gonja-West "President Maradona." The latter reference, of course, was to the legendary Argentinian soccer wizard known more for his brazen mischief on the soccer field, such as making passes and scoring goals with his hand, glaring infringements of the laid-down rules of the game, than his equally recognized dribbling swiftness on the field.

Anyway, as of this writing (3/1/14), we are well aware of Mr. Mahama's expedient neglect, or outright abandonment, of the Kotokouraba Market reconstruction, passionately promised the people of Cape Coast in the wake of the tragic passing of his former and sometime mentor and widely rumoured conduct investigator, President John Evans Atta-Mills.

Like the reckless gallivanting lecher that he has been widely accused of being, Mr. Mahama has now latched onto the construction of a purportedly ultra-modern library complex in Cape Coast, in memory of President Atta-Mills. But what most Ghanaians ought to be more worried about is less of whether Mr. Mahama is intellectually agile and imaginatively original enough to craft and carry out his own political agenda, than the reality of his provable achievements on the ground, as it were. Have the lives of the proverbial average Ghanaian worker significantly improved? There is the rub, in classical Shakespearean parlance.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
March 1, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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