Yes, birds can’t fly if you break their feathers. They become prone to predators. This is what has happened to the NDC demonstrators who took to the streets when the EC declared Nana Akufo-Addo the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. Poor souls. They are now licking their wounds. I refuse to be fooled by any Jupiter because I am a wise man’s son and neither do I suffer fools so gladly. Anytime the faces of the NDC demonstrators who hit the streets across the country flashes on my mind’s eye, I see nothing but fooled idiots parading on our streets with tyres to burn and stones to throw. Their leadership misinformed, misled, tricked and fooled them to save their faces for leading a failed propaganda campaign that did not wash.
When you succeed in fooling a group of people in your quest for power, you eventually stand at the receiving end when such persons wise up. It is dangerous because apart from the fact that you lose respect, you are also a nuisance and a vexation to their spirits, and they begin to treat you like dirt. It may be the end of your ability to continue deceiving such people because the sages say once bitten, twice shy. When you need them again to do one thing or the other, they become skeptical and suspicious. They also watch you with a third eye because they cannot believe in their two eyes. This is the dilemma of Mr. John Dramani Mahama, the trickster who ended up tricking himself.
We all saw the man surrounded by his master propagandists, Sammy Gyamfi, Otukonor and skinny Asiedu Nketia when he addressed the media after the announcement of the 2020 general election results. He boldly told the world that he won the presidential election but it was stolen by the EC for Nana Akufo-Addo. We believed that he had a case because his General Secretary had told Ghanaians that they had computed the results of all the polling stations in Ghana and have come to realize that they won one hundred and forty one parliamentary seats and that it stood to reason that their flag bearer too won the election. Stupid analysis. It became more convincing to their ignorant supporters when loud-mouthed Mr. Know Everything, Sammy Gyamfi, started referring to swollen-headed Mahama as ‘Mr. President-Elect’.
The sages say the ear that refuses to hear will go with the head when it is chopped off. So the supporters of the NDC heard what their flag bearer and the leadership of the party said, and when they were asked by Asiedu Nketia to jubilate even when the results were not released, they started wearing white robes and headgear and danced with merriment and jubilations. I wrote the other day in this same column that until Mr. Mahama comes out to congratulate President Akufo-Addo and apologize to the supporters of the NDC for misleading them, I will keep coming out with pieces that will annoy him and remind him of his sordid past. I know it is painful to remind someone of his sordid past, but that should be the lot of arrogant John Dramani Mahama, who is scheming to lead the NDC again as if there are no ‘men’ in the party.
Talking about ‘men’ in the party reminds me of old guards of the NDC who put their noses on the grindstone to bring the party this far. The list is too long to occupy this space but permit me to mention but a few of them: Kwamena Ahwoi, Ato Ahwoi, Kwesi Botchwey, Sipa Yankey, Ibrahim Adam, Kwame Peprah, Cecilia Johnson, Emma Mitchell, Kojo Tsikata, Dan Abodakpi, Huudu Yahaya, Ibn Chambas, Kofi Totobi Quakyi, Akuoko Sarpong, Sam Pee Yalley, Akrasi Sarpong etc. These and many more elders of the NDC have since been silent and do not even comment on anything that happens in the party. Mr. Mahama has been able to cunningly silence them like the way he did to the late Rawlings, and he is now the master of all what he surveys. He is now swimming in power and glory with praise singers who live in opulence. Mahama’s gatekeepers and attack dogs bark at these old guys even when they try to come closer to offer pieces of advice because they fear the old guards will rise up again like Barbarossa and take their rightful places.
Another group of persons who are lost totally in the scheme of things are the cadres of the revolution. Theirs is a sad and pathetic story. The modern day Don Quixotes in the NDC, led by Asiedu Nketia treat these guys like shit. They do not want their names to be heard by the younger generation, not to talk of their contributions to the revolution that gave birth to the NDC. When the going was tough and the tough kept going, these were the guys who made sure the revolution survived. We learnt at the National Reconciliation Commission hearings that more than thirty coup d’etats were staged against the Rawlings’s revolution, but they were all quelled through the vigilance of these revolutionary cadres. Some of them died through the barrel of AK 47 assault rifles in their attempt to fight dissidents, leaving behind their wives and children who are living in abject poverty.
Where are they? Many of them are very old, unemployed, not employable, sick and dying. Some are living from hand to mouth in their respective villages where people laugh at them and curse them for the wicked roles they played in the revolution. Come to my village and see Corporal Amidu Issah, popularly called Old Soldier. He was a terror in the revolutionary days, and people run for cover any time he visited the village from Accra where he was revolutionizing. Today, he lives alone in his hut with no wife nor children because when his colleagues in the village were farming and caring for their wives and children, Old Soldier was busy defending the bloody revolution. He has been devoured by the revolution as there is no hope for tomorrow for him. When children teasingly shout “Old Soldier”, he responds: “Old Soldier never dies”. Meanwhile, his days are numbered as he roams the nooks and crannies of the village, begging for food to eat. Such type of former cadres could be seen across the country, suffering to make ends meet, but the likes of Asiedu Nketia, who was taping palm wine at Seikwa in the Bono Region when the kitchen was hot have their wives and children domiciled overseas, enjoying life to the fullest. Na so the world be, my brother!! If you were part of the marauding demonstrators who dared the soldiers and police during those senseless demonstrations, you should think again because what is happening to the old cadres may happen to you when you are old, poor and useless. A word to the wise is in the North, where I come from. Can I flick my Havana?
By Eric Bawah