Nana Akufo Addo
“I have news for the President. I have news for the so-called advisors; no amount of vilification, no amount of insults, no amount of fabrication, no amount of concoction against me is going to stop me from doing my work for the people of our country and for the progress of our nation. Nothing is going to stop me” – Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, flag-bearer of NPP. (A rhetoric gift to generations yet unborn)
After listening to Nana Akufo-Addo at the Mantse Agbonaa rally, I couldn’t help but quickly go for my thesaurus to find the real meaning of some of the words he used. Even though I have enough words in my arsenal of the Queen’s language, I tried to recheck. My thesaurus told me vilification means disparagement, maliciousness, criticism, abuse, backbiting, denigration, slander, libel, defamation, abasement. Fabrication, according to my thesaurus, means untruth, lie, invention, falsehood, cock-and-bull story, fib, forgery, fiction, fake, white lie. And listen to the same thesaurus on concoction: creation, fiction, fantasy. Ewuradze Nyame, brofo yedru!
And so after three years of insults, the man who has enough shock absorbers to stomach all the lies cooked and fed to the good people of this country, finally came out to tell us that after all he was not bothered at all. You see, I have had cause to write in this column that when the sea is rough, the fishes do not mind. The Mills hounds who have been released to bark and bite men and women who have come a long way to become what they are today are rather exposing their boss to danger. Everyman man or woman has his or her sordid past and glorious moments. Nobody can convince me that the Pope who was once an altar boy before becoming who he is today has no sordid past. Similarly, no Jupiter can convince me that the Asantehene who occupies the Golden Stool, or any other revered chief in this country, has no sordid past. Yours sincerely has some sordid past in my cupboard.
When we were young and growing in our various villages or schooling somewhere, we all did one bad thing or the other. If for example it is so awesome to refer to Nana as a womanizer, then I think it is highly abominable to impregnate a maid when you have a wedded wife. What about the scenario where such a man who raped the maid refused to take responsibility of the child who was born out of wedlock, or was forced by the wedded wife to banish the poor child to Cape Coast to live with his aunt? If such a man eventually becomes the president of a nation, should we call him an irresponsible parent? And yet the hounds of Mills will jump on the rooftop to shout to the world that the worst had happened simply because Nana joked with a lady. It was not for nothing that the sages said when you live in a glass house, you do not throw stones.
Ex- president Kufuor was very right when he said Nana Akufo- Addo had shown impressive restraint in the face of petty and rather immature propaganda. Despite being the target of persistent vile propaganda and concoctions, Nana has really shown impeccable maturity by not responding in like manner. The man is highly focused and refuses to go down the gutter with upstarts like Otukonor and his other miscreants. A man who was a three-term Member of Parliament, an astute lawyer and politician of international repute, a gentleman who was the Foreign Minister of Ghana, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and one who addressed the United Nation Security Council and received a standing ovation, should not stoop so low before half-wits and nit-wits who are learning how to crawl. Nana trusts in the courage and triumph of free men.
And those of us who follow him believe it all the more because we see that in him. In fact, the man believes that Ghana is not just a place in the world but the hope of Africa. That is why he said “I believe in Ghana”. He is always optimistic that liberty would strive wherever it is planted, and he has been acting to defend liberty wherever it is threatened. That is the mark of a statesman. If that stance of the man is what calls for the jealousy and insults, so be it.
Anytime they try to link Nana to the use of hard drugs, they rather promote the substance and sometimes they make me feel like going out there to buy cocaine or marijuana for my two sons to use so that they too could reach the pinnacle where Nana is today. If somebody who has achieved such great success in life, as written above, is said to be on drugs, then I think the likes of Otukonor, Koku Anyidoho and the others should get hooked to hard drugs so that they too could be like Nana in future. For me, I hate being treated like dirt by obviously mediocre opportunists and undisciplined upstarts for whom I have scant regard. It is good Nana is treating these morons with the ordinary contempt they deserve. It was the late Professor Kofi Abrefa Busia, the former Prime Minister of Ghana, who once said if you want to do politics in Ghana, then you have to acquire a big stomach that can contain all nonsense. That is for Busia, but as for some of us who do not have such big stomachs, we will not sit down for ignoramuses to destroy the hard-won reputation of our role models. That is why anytime they use gutter language, some of us also descend to the edge of the gutter to administer the most appropriate verbal punishment.
But should we continue like this as a nation? The answer is no because there are several pressing issues begging for discussion. Candidate Akufo-Addo is promising Ghanaians that when voted to power, he will make sure that children who attend Senior High School do not pay school fees. He has gone on to tell us that we are no longer going to be producers of raw materials. He has promised that the stage where we export raw materials in the history of the country will be over when the NPP comes to power on 7th January next year. The man has gone further to promise that he is now going to make a new industrial economy for Ghana, one that can create jobs for our young people, one that can bring better wages and higher incomes for the people.
These and other promises that he will be making are the ones that should attract our attention. We need to keep records of the promises being made so that when eventually he holds the reins of power, we will take him to task. In 2000, when candidate Kufuor promised to do away with the cash and carry system of health delivery, candidate Mills went to Wa to tell the people that no one could do away with the cash and carry system and that even in the developed countries it was not possible. The Akans have a saying that when a blind man threatens to throw a stone at you, he might have been sitting on one. Immediately the NPP came to power, the government introduced the National Health Insurance Scheme on pilot basis. Today, the NHIS is being practiced nationwide. What is candidate Mills going to tell the people of Wa when he happens to go there to campaign this year? How is this pathological liar going to convince us as far as his promise of a one-term premium for the NHIS is concerned? Give him another four years to finally kill the scheme?
Looking at the high rate of JHS graduates who could not make it to the SHS, and as such have become a burden on their parents and society as a whole, a promise to make SHS free is very welcome. From the way Ghanaians have continued to take President Mills to the cleaners for his inability to keep his many campaign promises, I want to believe that Nana has his tramp cards on his chest. In the early sixties, when the late President Nkrumah introduced an industrial economy, we hardly heard of unemployment.
From Sekondi-Takoradi to Tema, Kumasi and Bolgatanga, factories sprouted like mushrooms on hills. Anytime we opened our Akasanoma wireless sets, all what we heard was a song titled ‘Work and happiness’. Those were the days when we really felt ‘pay day. If a flag-bearer is promising to bring back those happy times, we only need to pray for him for his dream to become a reality so that the teaming number of unemployed graduates who are roaming the streets of Accra and other big towns would be a thing of the past.
Vilification and insult is not the answer. Rather, we need to ask questions as to how the candidate would be able to bring his promises into fruition. Are the hounds of President Mills listening?
By Eric Bawah
