John Mahama
Former President John Mahama is in a trance; the symptoms are showing loudly – they cannot be missed. The electoral defeat which sent him packing out of Jubilee House has inflicted an abnormality of thought in him; as his campaign gathers momentum, the negative symptoms are now taking the form of nuisances. From the North they are pouring, not raining.
He is reported to have urged President Akufu-Addo to dream big for Ghana. We are hard-pressed not to pose the question: Between the former President and President Akufo-Addo who is dreaming big for the country?
Of course, the two are incomparable.
One factor which differentiates between an ordinary leader and the outstanding one, a statesman, is that the former by his action does not bequeath a legacy for the country’s history but the latter leaves many landmarks standing in his name long after his exit from the helm.
Former President Mahama for the eight years that he has been on the corridor of power, if you like, cannot point at a legacy that can win him the title of a statesman whose legacies would be remembered by members of tomorrow’s generations. He can only be remembered by the negativities which caused his exit.
Corruption and mismanagement of the public purse are some of the attributes of the former president’s tenure.
Blimey! Former President John Mahama asking President Akufo-Addo to dream big for Ghana is rich in our estimation as it is with all right thinking Ghanaians. Leaders who dream big embark upon projects which their opposites consider superfluous and unfeasible. Was that not what the former President did when President Akufo-Addo touted the free SHS project?
A leader who dreams big is not dazed by the machinations of his detractors such as the former President Mahama but remains steadfast about his projects. It is this quality which made the president stayed his course until the takeoff of the free SHS project and now the double track system; both of which have suffered albeit without effect, from the sledge-hammer of the former President. Indeed President Akufo-Addo was regarded by the former President and his propaganda managers as a conman for promising his compatriots a free SHS in the country – a project they thought could not be implemented given the degree of looting they had inflicted on the public purse. Now it is operative.
A President who dreams big is not deterred by the size of projects in as much as these would inure to the benefit of the people of this country. No country has developed and therefore changed the lot of her people which did not invest in education. We have a big dreamer in President Akufo-Addo whose decision and implementation of a free SHS module has earned him international acclaim.
Our comatose railway system was never remembered by the NDC government in its scheme of things perhaps because they were overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the capital outlay involved; they could not appreciate the positive fallouts from a successful resuscitation of this transportation project because they are not dreamers. In the next few years, the dead railway system would come to life and a new set of professionals would emerge in the country even as the economy is fitted with another appendage. Who is a dreamer? That must of course be the one who damned the odds and went ahead to operationalise his dream of a free SHS. True or false?