The Ghanaian Presidency: Hype, Burst Myth and/or Sakawa?

He was billed by his apologists as the nonpareil of Ghanaian politics, past, present and future, which he relished and basked in. Even a doubter like me was taken in and I feared I would have to eat humble kose and confess my error in doubting the man’s ability…

The electoral cycle that saw him on a white charger riding to the citadel of power has gone full circle and another election is now upon us – only a couple of months or so ahead and what do we see?

In fact, some people are holding him up as the worst incumbent in our history, including the military ones. Overall, after inheriting a country at peace with itself, he has failed to hold the country together. His “patapaa” personality has splintered us into non-compromising ethnocentric (Akyem and the rest of us), religious (Christianity and the rest of us. Re: so called national cathedral) and political units (NPP on rampage. Re: vigilantism), Social indiscipline (Kennedy Agyepong, MP, Hawa Koomson, MP), and compromised national security (all across the services)… Furthermore, he has so compromised national institutions (Judiciary, Auditor General, EC, etc.,) as to divest them of any integrity – hardly the kind of disposition that would encourage innovation, creativity and productivity. Even with his party, the NPP, he has succeeded in driving irreconcilable wedges.

Due to his inordinate desire to hold on to power by all means, the electoral commission embarked on acts of reckless partisanship, to the extent that people, which includes me, are wondering openly and loudly whether the Ghanaian edifice would not come crumbling down as a result of electoral disputes. And now I hear he is roaming all over the place with an occult chair to ensure his retention at the polls! Can you imagine that?! And this, from a man, who is pushing a so called Christocentric national cathedral on a multi-faith polity like ours!

I am sure, even he must now be embarrassed by his infamous “y3 ti sika so, na 3kom di y3n”, which now finds place in his baskets of sakawa…

It is this sakawa, in relation to the elections that gives me sleepless nights. I have seen, or participated in many Ghanaian elections and none of them has filled me with as much dread and foreboding as the one approaching on December 7 2020. It will be an “All die be die” affair, a Nana Addo election principle.

It surprises, even irks me, that my fellow compatriots are going about as if we are in normal times and things are proceeding “business as usual”, with free, fair and violence-free elections expected.

A malevolent seed was sown in December 2016 and on January 2017 the first drops of the poisoning waters that would grow and sustain it started flowing through its capillaries. That seed has now grown into an absolutely poisonous and pernicious tree that could take our country down.

What can be done? We all sat down and saw and watched, the roots spread everywhere. Let me cut through all these metaphors: Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo is not the man who can ensure, assure, free, fair and violence-free elections. When he enunciated his infamous doctrine of “All die be die”, he meant it. If Ghana is to burn for him to retain political power, so be it! Are my fellow citizens telling me that they have not caught on to the dangers ahead?

Vigilance can help avert certain yet-to-occur catastrophes and so do prayers. Let us combine the two and we may yet see our country being spared. May God hear our prayers…

In September ’39, it was the culmination of glossing over the many signs in plain sight by such an enlightened, educated and sophisticated society like Germany that allowed the NAZI thugs to hijack the democratic system and conflagrate the entire globe into a major fireball. In September 2001, an equally enlightened, educated and sophisticated society with an all-knowing intelligence system like the US could not pick up the signs and scents and allowed murderous young men from the Arabian Peninsula to turn the world upside down.

Our homeland Ghana, eerily feels to me like a hijacked nation using the democratic process to hurtle us towards its doom. The organizers of Election 2020 – the government and electoral commission have so fouled the atmosphere that there will be no room for compromise. I hope I am wrong – very wrong!

From the electoral timetable, to the requirements for acquiring a voter ID card, to the management of the Ghana card registration/issuance, to the new voter register, to the ongoing examination, it’s been one big traumatic experience after another for our suffering nation on just how to disenfranchise major swathes of the electorate to favour Nana Addo. I don’t think his party even means that much to him…

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It is not for me to wish doom on my country, far from it, but I am also old and hopefully wise enough to notice if my country is heading that way and sound the alarm…The Akufo-Addo hype has been unmasked – and the myth shattered, by his own missteps – he must be stopped from taking us down with him in one sakawa electoral swoop!

Whoever came up with sakawa to describe Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his mafia must have lots and lots humour. The word has been with us for as long as I can remember, only to re-surface in these last few months to elections as such a hilarious but devastating tour de force. Honest I can’t stop laughing! Brilliant! But also terrifying…

Casting my mind back to around this same time four years ago in 2016, these same people, now bleating about the pain of the barb of sakawa had put the words “incompetent” and “corrupt” on many tongues to “describe” the then sitting president and government. Only that, those words, unlike the 2020 “sakawa” metaphor, had no humour or even sarcasm to them and were meant to insult, belittle and denigrate. The man in charge then, John Dramani Mahama, took it all in stride and did not run whining, whingeing and whimpering to catholic bishops to intervene, neither did any ethnocentric bigots take to the streets to protest.

He who led the 2016 onslaught against such a fine gentleman like John Mahama, is today himself unable to face much, much, less and wants to be ennobled as he who must be obeyed, he who must not be trifled with, he who is the lord of all that he surveys. No sir! You cannot eat your cake and have it! When he, in 2016, aided by Mahmoudu Bawumia (and that little wife of his) made President Mahama into a punching bag, little did they expect that a day of reckoning would someday arrive. Today we all know who is incompetent and super corrupt! They even mocked ECOWAS as corrupt leaders and AU leaders as dictators when Mahama became the ECOWAS chair in 2015. Five years later, they are hailing Nana Addo for filling this same routine multilateral position as if no Ghanaian leader had been there before.

Sakawa – like ananse – the trickster and perpetuator of fraud: this has now become one real and present danger to our country, all because of one hype on a myth – the myth which is broken and the ugly truth of potential destruction now confronting us. Is this what the 2016 “change” was all about? Naaaaarrr! Hope we’ve all learnt the painful but awakening lessons…

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By Amb. Alhaji Abdul-TRahman Harruna Attah