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Opinions of Sunday, 10 January 2016

Columnist: Gyimah, Gilbert Adu

Kofi Dubai Encourages Ghanaians to Show Hospitality in 2016

January 7, 2016



Dear Country-Folks,

Well, well, well, well. Was it not just a year ago that I promised that 2015 was going to witness a major turn-around for the nation? Well, my competence saw to it that the promise was kept. So towards the end of the year, my Administration, through my very competent Minister of Power announced that “dumsor was a thing of the past”. At the appropriate time, I shalll go into why I had to give Opana the sack so soon after the announcement.

And all too soon, we have embarked upon yet another journey into a New Year 2016. What does this year promise? Well same as I promised in 2012: “E dey bee kur kur”.

This year, I would like fellow Ghanaians to show more hospitality to one another. And also to strangers. To walk the talk, to lead by example, I have taken the liberty as your competent one to invite some “homeless” strangers into our midst. These strangers are two Yemeni citizens who have been held at a US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for over a decade on terrorism-related matters.

While doing my usual surfing on Whatzzup to see what the latest might be from Auntie B, I realized that a lot of discussions on social media and elsewhere are accusing me of having undertaken this gesture for “nokofioo”, for “ketewaa biaa ensua”. Well, I have news for you. Folks could not be more wrong on that assessment.

With the expected $1bn in loans that was recently approved by my Party folks in parliament, money is not a problem for me. My problem, to paraphrase General Yakubu Gowon when he was President of Nigeria, is not lack of money but how to spend it. And some of you will be with me in paradise when it comes to chopping the meat down to the bone: e dey bee kur kur. After all this is election year, abi.

But I have a problem of another kind. There is something I have been coveting for a long time. In the history of Ghana, almost all of our Heads of State have visited the US in one capacity or the other. Such visits were usually: private, working, or official (look up the details at https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/visits/ghana).

Only two of our Heads of State, Kofi Boom and Kofi Diawuo got to visit the US on a State Visit. As some of you may know, a State Visit is as high as it gets in terms of honour, prestige and recognition of a Head of State and his/her country by the US.

If I should get invited to the US on a State Visit as I anticipate, I shall bring you photos as I did when I posed by the CNN emblem at the CNN Headquarters. And I shall have these photos (of President Obama and myself in our dinner jackets) branded on buses and taxis. And in an election year, that can work wonders.

So having helped the US with her Guantanamo Bay detainees wahala, I have acquired lobbying rights to getting on to that list of potential State Visit invitees this year.

So watch out for a better rebranding in my WhiteHouse dinner photos, courtesy of Guantanamo.


Your “incompetency”
President Kofi Dubai




Gilbert Adu Gyimah
Gilly.gyimah@gmail.com
Alberta, Canada