The theme of today’s write-up centres on the word “credibility”. To avoid being accused of engaging in insults, please allow me to first look up the meaning of the word.
“Credibility” can be defined as “the quality of being trusted and believed in.” Other words that are synonymous to it are “integrity, trustworthiness, reliability and dependability.”
I grew up in an extended family house with more than 10 male cousins. I shared a room with one whose character was diametrically opposite to mine. He epitomized the phrase ‘naughty boy’.
I vividly remember how he was once caught in the act of stealing meat from a hot pot of soup. Even with a piece of meat in the hand and the other in the mouth, he still claimed innocence. I have since never believed any word coming from his mouth.
You see, after all the lies, deception and bad behaviours, he had lost credibility and was still paying for his childhood ‘sins’ even as he tries to live a respectable life now. Same goes for a pastor caught pants down engaging in a ‘jigi-jigi’ bout with the wife of a congregant. It is only a hypnotized or naive congregation that will continue to believe in such a discredited servant of the Bearded Old Man above.
Abusuapanin, if I were to choose the only man in the country’s politics who has lost so much credibility as a politician, then it would be the man who responds to the name Dead-Goat. His name has been so tainted that I once heard a comedian equating his name to corruption.
In case you have forgotten, he was the one who received a $100,000 Ford from Djibril Kanazoe, the Burkinabe contractor. Mr Dead-Goat wants the world to believe it was a gift but we know better, don’t we? We know the so-called gift was a ‘thank you’ from the Burkinabe contractor for the Ghana Embassy contact in his homeland and the other subsequent road contracts.
Having taken the ‘gift’, he had given the contractor the licence to do shoddy work and go unpunished. Is it any wonder that the contractor’s low-grade work had left the Dodi Papase road crying for maintenance?
It is no secret that the financial sector mess was caused by the Ogwanfunu government. Indeed, 82 financial institutions collapsed during his reign, and he sat on the fence as the depositors looked for a messiah to protect their savings and investments. If such a man now comes telling the world he will pay all affected depositors within a year, it is only fair to look at his record when he was in power.
All we hear him saying is the promise to clean up the financial sector. But the question is: what did he do to help clean up the financial sector mess when he was President? Nothing, absolutely nothing!
Obviously, such a discredited man cannot be trusted to do what he is saying. It is at best a sweet story being told to hoodwink such depositors to help put him back on the presidential throne.
Mr. Dead-Goat is known by all to be an avowed opponent of the Free SHS policy. He opposed it as a vice-presidential candidate in 2008, did same as President and presidential candidate in 2012 and repeated the dose in 2016. He and his ilk just did not believe free SHS could be possible. I can even conjecture that the cowries spent on adverts to discredit the Free SHS policy can build 100 or more E-Blocks.
Fast forward to 2017, the Nana Dee government fulfilled its promise and started Free SHS. Mr. Dead-Goat still did not believe in investing in the policy. Just last year, he even questioned why the Nana Dee government should spend a whopping GH ¢2 billion on Free SHS alone? How can I believe such a man when he makes a sudden u-turn and starts promising to be the one to improve the policy?
For sure, common sense should tell me to compare him to the one who believed in the policy from the beginning and also made sure it became a reality. Only a political fanatic or one bereft of common sense will believe the former over the latter.
It is evident that while Mr. Dead-Goat believes in the leadership of convenience, his counterpart believes in the leadership of conviction. Leadership of convenience is the kind that Nana Akomea describes as ‘obey the wind’ leadership.
Obey the wind leader just promises anything to deceive the electorate. He is the kind that has no credibility and should not be trusted. Believing the promises of such a leader is tantamount to believing that you can find a needle in the middle of a river.
See you next week for another interesting konkonsa, Deo volente!