The Mossi people of Burkina Faso do not throw blows. They wrestle. When you see a Mossi man throwing blows in the course of wrestling, then he is losing the match. If you are clever enough, you can make a proverbial Mossi man who throws blows to fall down without touching him. All what you need to do is to cleverly dodge his blows. Because the Mossi man throws his blows out of anger, the weight of the blow swings him to the grounds if it fails to land on his opponent.
John Mahama has been acting like a proverbial Mossi man who is losing a wrestling match. He throws wild blows which always land him on the grounds. The sad thing is that he has never learnt from his mistakes. It was not for nothing that more than one million people from the Ashanti Region voted against him in the 2016 general elections. He started insulting the Asantes when he ungentlemanly told the world on the Floor of Parliament that the Asantes cannot differentiate between the letter ‘l’ and ‘r’ when pronouncing a word in the English language. The Asante parliamentarians took exception to the uncouth statement and drew the attention of the Speaker of Parliament to it and demanded withdrawal of the comment—he stood on his grounds! Even when the Speaker of Parliament asked him to withdraw the statement, it took him more than twenty minutes to do so.
Then he went to Kumasi to meet his NDC sympathisers and in the course of the deliration, he told his gullible listeners that the Asantes are so ungrateful that even when you tar all the roads in Kumasi with gold, they will still remain ungrateful. No amount of pleadings by well-meaning Ghanaians could make him retract his statement. That is Mahama, the proud peacock for you! During the 2016 electioneering campaign, he went to the Northern Region and told the people there that they should vote for him because he is a Northerner and unlike Akufo-Addo who is an Akyem man, he knows their needs more than he does. He went further to tell them that even though Dr. Bawumia is from the Northern Region, the NPP will never make him a presidential candidate because he is from the Northern Region.
Today, John Mahama has bitten off more than he can chew. He calls the people of Akyem ‘sakawa boys’. Looking at the face of the President when he was addressing the Christian Council, one could see anger and disappointment written on his face. He bemoaned the silence of prominent Ghanaians who have kept silent over the comments made by John Mahama, including the Christian Council. The President has pains in his heart because if he was the one who made that statement, people would jump on his neck.
If I were the President, I would not worry because if anyone in Ghana is a ‘sakawa’ boy or girl or a thief, that person is Mahama. When he was tasked by the late President Atta Mills to negotiate for the Embraer 190, it came out that some deals took place. When the information leaked out, Mr. Mills tasked four gentlemen who are still alive to probe into the matter. Before the team could meet to probe that scandal, the fine professor was mysteriously ‘killed’. When John Mahama took over as the president of Ghana, the Embraer scandal died a natural death. And this is a man who calls some people ‘sakawa’.
If Mahama thinks the Airbus scandal will die like the Embraer one, he should rethink because long as Nana Akufo-Addo remains in power, the case will see its natural conclusion. Mahama is desperate for power to cover up all his wrongdoing. He knows pretty well that unlike Mr. Rawlings and Kufuor, who are living peacefully after serving the nation, he (John Mahama) will forever live with a worried conscience. His hands are so tainted with corruption that he will have to continue washing his hands with soap under running water even if the coronavirus is defeated.
I would like to use this column to appeal to our President to stay focused and continue to deliver the good things that he has for Ghanaians. There is a job to be done and the president should avoid any politics of distraction being exhibited by a man who will forever live with a tainted character. After all, who in Ghana doesn’t know that John Mahama is an accomplished failure as far as the presidency is concerned. Was it not this same Mahama who opened the floodgate for the NDC leadership to milk the state cow while and his wife dumped their booty in Dubai? One day, the chickens will come home to roost.
From Eric Bawah