Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo
For nearly eight years, Nana Akufo Addo has endured all the vilifications, outright insults, contemptuous comments and name calling. He has deliberately treated all these with controlled temper and insists on focusing on his dream of expertly managing the affairs of this country when voted into power. In the face of these uncalled-for insults the Peace Council never called the NDC attack dogs to order. Apart from a few senior citizens who once a while criticize the attitude of these NDC buffoons, Ghanaians kept silent.
When the NDC good-for-nothing goons realized that Nana Addo had a very tough skin, they abandoned the insults and took to violence. It started at Odododiodio where Nii Lantey Vanderpuye armed his boys to go on rampage, beating and slashing innocent supporters of the NPP at random with machetes. They did not even spare a Parliamentarian in the person of Madam Ursula Owusu who was beaten up in the run-up to the 2012 General Election. The police looked the other way as Nii Vanderpuye carried the world on his shoulders and went haywire. After all, is his government not in power?
The marauding train of violence moved to Techiman where Mr. Alex Kyeremeh took over the reign of terror. The Techiman Municipality was literally turned into a war zone as machete wielding NDC supporters took to the streets, doing their own thing like the way Nii Lantey did at Odododiodioo. In the case of Techiman, a graduate teacher who was the Techiman North NPP Constituency Organizer was bathed with acid. The injury the guy sustained was so serious that he had to be flown to Germany for surgery. Today this handsome guy is walking with one eye. In fact, according to physicians at Korle Bu where he was first referred to if he had not been sent to that special hospital in Germany he would have died.
Then, the Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr. Eric Opoku took over the baton. This man who also doubles as the Member of Parliament of Asutifi South organized the NDC goons to beat and kill innocent NPP supporters. The blood of poor NPP supporters that flowed and continue to flow at Sankore, the Constituency capital is regrettable. The police at Sankore have also refused to take action while supporters of the NPP continue to live in fear. Recently when Nana Addo visited Sankore to introduce the Parliamentary Candidate of the NPP, inhabitants of Sankore felt reluctant to come out to meet Nana Addo because they feared when they came out openly, NDC thugs will attack them.
Even when Nana met a few of the brave supporters of the NPP to introduce the candidate, some NDC hooligans were lurking around on motorbikes, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. Nana Addo lamented on the way the NDC goons are treating supporters of the NPP and appealed to supporters of the NPP to stay strong because change is coming. Mr. Eric Opoku should remember that when the pendulum starts to swing right he will be the loser. When things change, Mr. Opoku will not enjoy the services of police guards. When that time comes, Mr. Opoku will realize that he will not be safe anytime he visited Sankore. Those who are being harassed today will pay him back in his own coin. Sometimes I wonder what some people want in this world. This is a minister who is fabulously rich and wants some more. If you get all the monies in this world and split the blood of your fellow human being, what do you gain? I don’t know if Eric Opoku is a Christian. If he is, he should see his pastor for deliverance. If he is not a Christian and worships deities, he should see an exorcist for the man to exorcise the evil spirit from his soul else he will forever live with disturbed mind. The man has so much blood on his hands.
Collins Dauda, the MP for Asutifi North is another man who has bred some hybrid madmen led by his brother one Naaba Abdulai who has even confessed to the whole world that he killed some persons before and will kill again. Such a self-confessed murderer is walking the streets of Mehame in the Asutifi North constituency while the police are looking helpless simply because his brother is a cabinet minister. The NPP supporters should take consolation in the fact that crime has no status bar. When the NDC leaves office (which they will do, anyway) and another government comes to power, cases against this criminal will be triggered and he will face the full rigors of the law. Like Eric Opoku, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development will also find himself in an awkward situation. He will also not get a police bodyguard and he will find it difficult to walk around freely. Collins Dauda has sown dragon teeth at Ahafo Mehame and he will surely reap thorns one day.
The irony of this scenario is that when Nana Addo was condemning the violence being meted out to the NPP supporters at Sankore, little did he know that Ako Gunn, a jailbird and his bloodthirsty hooligans were also planning to attack his residence at Nima in Accra. And so on Sunday 13th of November 2016 while Nana was campaigning in the Brong Ahafo Region, Ako Gunn led an NDC keep fit group made up of drunk, drugged, irresponsible, rabble-rousers and fickle-minded criminals to his residence to vandalize the place without any provocation. The sad aspect of this unprovoked attack is that it took the policemen and women at the Nima police station more than one hour to go to the trouble spot to save lives. And the police station is situated a few meters from the residence of the leader of the main opposition party.
If you have been reading this column you will remember that I wrote in one of my articles that Americans did not wake up one morning to see cowboys wearing pistols in holsters around their waists. In the early fifties, the commonest things to see in the Wild West in America were gun-totting cowboys who shot their way with impunity. It started when some of these cowboys went on a cattle stealing spree with their pistols. In order to protect their cattle, those who felt threatened bought pistols and laid ambush in the night to make sure no one stole their cattle. That was the beginning of the gun culture in the US. In fact that is the reason why today in America, one out of ten citizens owns guns.
What the NDC attack dogs are doing is similar to what some of the cowboys did in those years. If care is not taken, people will not hesitate to buy guns to protect themselves, before, during and after this year’s elections. If President Mahama thinks the violence committed by the NDC rubble-rousers will inure to his benefit in the run-up to the general election, he should forget because if even he wins the election, he will rule over a divided nation. As the sages say, a divided army cannot win wars. Similarly, a polarized nation can never see development. Sometimes I wonder why the president is so desperate for a second term in office. He has never lost any opportunity to tell Ghanaians that he has been the best president since independence. Why then the anxiety and desperation? If you think you have done well, sit in your office at the Flagstaff House and wait for December 7.
For the past three months, the president, his Veep, his wife, the Chief of Staff and almost all his ministers are on the campaign trail, leaving an empty Flagstaff House. Every day Commissioner Mahama is seen on television stations commissioning schools, toilets and cutting sods to commission fathom projects. You see, Ghanaians have wised up after being deceived for eight years by the NDC administration. It is they who will decide whether the John Mahama administration has done well or not. Let the president and his people go around the country, beating their chest that they have done well. When the D-Day arrives Ghanaians will speak with their thumps. Instead of the man brazing himself up for a crushing defeat, he goes about telling Ghanaians that he will win “one touch”
AKO GUNN: AN EX-CONVICT AND HIS STONE THROWERS
If an ex-convict is released from prison and he starts throwing stones, we must be wide awake and gird our loins. Such persons are very dangerous and if they lay their hands on guns, blood will surely flow. Ghanaians are living in bad times and only the Lord God of Hosts can deliver us from the hands of evil-minded persons like this Montie ex-convict. A man who threatened the life of the Chief Justice of Ghana should not be taken for granted. The guy is hot-headed and we should blame those who signed the petition for the president to trigger Article 296 of the Constitution of Ghana which led to the remission of the four-month sentence imposed on this man and his other crazy two Montie people.
With every atrocity they commit, they hope that the NPP supporters will grow fearful, retreating and forsaking their ambition to wrestle power and manage the affairs of this country well. They stand against the NPP because the NPP stands in their way. They just want to win power to continue looting the national coffers. By sacrificing human life to serve their ego and personal interest, they think they can survive the change about to blow them away like tsunami. They have abandoned every value except the will to power. They will follow in that path of violence all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded brutalities.
Eric Bawah