John Mahama
For eight years, Ghanaians saw poverty standing side by side with wealth. John Mahama and his bunch of nation wreckers and looters of state coffers took Ghanaians for granted and went about literally skinning Ghanaians. They have grown fabulously rich and live like Epicureans. Having tasted the good things in life, the NDC people are very much afraid of losing these elections. By the close of the day, they will see their smoothness level and the chickens will come home to roost.
It has been nearly two years of gruesome campaign amidst insults, fisticuffs and sheer threats. So much water has passed under the bridge and this is the day of reckoning. Ghanaians have endured a painful ‘dumsor’ for more than four years and the hardships that have been visited on Ghanaians are unbearable. Unemployment has reached the rooftop while people continue to live from hand to mouth. Crime rate is very high and the nation has become a very busy hub for drug trade. As for corruption, the government of John Dramni Mahama ranks the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The national debt, piled up for generation yet unborn to pay, beats the imagination of poor Ghanaians. Agriculture has woefully declined and farm inputs are beyond the reach of peasant farmers. Sixty years after independence, Ghana imports cabbages, tomatoes, onions, fresh pepper, and even palm oil from neighboring countries. The production of cocoa, the livewire of the country has dropped from one million tons to seven hundred tons. The Mass Cocoa Spraying programme left behind by the Kufour administration is a dead goat and people are dying like flies simply because they cannot pay hospital bills.
For more than five years, the guinea fowls that migrated to Burkina Faso have not returned yet while the Woyome money is as illusive as a needle in the Atlantic Ocean. The Asongtaba, Zuba, Watervile, SADA, NSC, Gyeeda, ISOFOTON, Ameri Karpower and many more scandals have been swept under the carpet. Apart from the police, military and the Immigration Service Department, almost all sectors of the economy have gone on strike, picketed or demonstrated. Inflation has hit the sky and prices of food items are running like Usain Bolt. Feeding Grants for Senior Secondary Schools are in arrears with students eating maggot infested food. Many marriages have hit the rocks because husbands are finding it difficult to manage their households. Many children have dropped out of school because parents cannot pay school fees.
As we go out everyday to eke a living, we see poverty standing side by side with wealth. Those who dared not looked into our faces are now fabulously rich and continue to build mansions which geometric dimensions are architectural wonder. The president, his wife, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Chief of Staff and NDC party functionaries are swimming in ill – gotten wealth while majority of the citizenry continue to live as poor as a church mouse. People have run out of patience but they cannot do anything because the government of the NDC has tied their hands behind their backs and gagged their mouths. Propaganda has taken the centre stage and government communicators speak as if they are not living in Ghana.
In the face of all these calamities that has befallen Ghanaians, the people have mustered courage all these years and continue to possess the patience of the vulture. Ever observed a vulture ‘standing’ beside a carcass before? The vulture is a scavenger and its delicacy is a carcass. When a vulture sees a carcass lying down, it will fly down and go around the carcass. At a point in time, the vulture will put its head on the chest of the carcass to see if indeed the animal is dead. When it realised that the animal is alive, the vulture will fly and perch on top of a nearby tree and wait. It could take a few days until the vulture realizes that the animal is dead before it will devour it. That is the patience of the vulture for you.
For the past eight years, Ghanaians have had the patience of the vulture and the time has come for the carcass to be devoured. If you are reading this piece this morning, walk to the polling station silently and remember the hardship that you have gone through since the NDC held the reins of power. Businessmen and women should remember the near collapse of their businesses because of ‘dumsor’ and high utility tariffs. Students should vote against the NDC as a protest against high school fees and trainee nurses and trainee teachers should vote against the NDC to protest the cancellation of their allowances. Farmers should vote against the NDC to serve notice that any government that comes to power and plays with them will pay dearly on election day.
As for drivers, especially taxi and trotro drivers, I will not have time to appeal to them to vote massively against the NDC. They know how much they have to cough out to pay for insurance and road worthy certificates of their cars and the perennial increase in fuel prices even though Ghana is an oil producing country. These drivers know how much they pay to acquire spare parts because of the high exchange rate. If you want to know how desperate taxi drivers are, just hire one and engage him in a conversation which borders on the hardships they are facing. I can bet with my last dime that these taxi drivers will vote against the NDC.
During the 2012 electioneering campaign, Nana Addo said when voted into power, his government would build hostels for the Kayayies operating in the big cities because it is unacceptable for the government to sit down for these poor folks to sleep in the open at the mercy of the harsh weather with their children. Nana said his government will also make sure vocational institutions are built to train these Kayayeis so that at the end of the day they will acquire an occupation to cater for themselves. When Nana made those pronouncements, the NDC hawks descended heavily on him and said Nana was demeaning the Kayayies. They said in their case, they will introduce the SADA which will create jobs for the young men and women who troop to the cities for menial jobs. Sadly the SADA turned out to be a conduit for the NDC to siphon monies for their 2012 campaign, thereby, leaving the Kayayies to continue to suffer. To add insult to injury, the NDC used the taxpayers’ money to buy head pans for the Kayayies to continue to do their jobs while the children of top men in the NDC are being schooled abroad. I know some of these Kayayies completed JHS and SHS and can read and write. They should tell their fellow brothers and sisters to massively vote against the NDC so that Nana’s promise of building hostels and vocational institutes for them will come to pass.
Ghanaian industrialists who are facing challenges should appeal to their workers to vote against the NDC so that a new government will come to save their businesses. Those who have been laid off because of the effect of ‘dumsor’ should vote for change so that when things go on well with their employers, they could go back to do their normal duties to eke a living. People who should never hesitate to vote against the NDC are traders. The sad aspect of this group of Ghanaians is that most of them are operating on bank loans and because times are hard, they are not getting customers while the banks are always on their necks for their monies. They sit in the stores all day long and go home empty handed. Today as they go to the polls to cast their votes, they should pretend as if there is no umbrella on the ballot paper and cast their vote for any party rather than the NDC.
As for teachers, they do not need anybody to tell them to vote against the NDC. The boys and girls they taught who have found themselves in government and who have grown fabulously rich within a short period of time that they landed their jobs in government has made the teaching profession a laughing stock. The sad aspect of this is that most of the boys and girls in the NDC government never landed any job in their miserable lives until they were offered ministerial and deputy ministerial positions. They drive their luxurious cars past their teachers whose feet are their only carriage. They don’t even bother to give them a lift. If you are a teacher and you are walking towards your polling station to vote today punish these people with your thumb.
The people of the Volta Region have history to make today. They should prove to the NDC that they are peeved because of the way they are treating Rawlings and his wife. If Asiedu Nketia could refer to their kinsman who founded the NDC that they love so much as a chained dog, then they should vote against the NDC and unchain their dog. If even they will not vote for the NPP, they should vote for Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, their in-law because when her husband was in power, she did a lot for them.
Today the good Lord of Israel will lift up His hand and Ghana will be free again. And in the morning after the freedom we will all sing Halleluiah in praise of He who delivered Israel from the hands of Pharaoh and his marauding army. (Help me say AMEN!!!)
Eric Bawah