In the wake of his irrecoverable defeat by then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in December 2016, an electorally concussed incumbent President J
In the wake of his irrecoverable defeat by then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in December 2016, an electorally concussed incumbent President John Dramani Mahama resorted to the reckless promotion of illegal small-scale mining and the wanton destruction of Ghana’s landed and forestry resources and, of course, the suicidal pollution of the hitherto pristine waterbodies in the country. At the time, the man who collapsed more indigenously owned Ghanaian businesses with Dumsor, that is, the perennially erratic energy supply, than any other government leader before him or since the expiration of his tenure, caustically criticized the newly elected Akufo-Addo Administration for daring to initiate plans and policies geared towards radically rooting out Galamsey on grounds of acute shortage of youthful employment.
Now, if the previous Mills-Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had put into place any comprehensive national youth employment program, Kwame Gonja, as the former President is also popularly and widely known, would not have had to cynically and criminally promote Galamsey. Which is why when he so mindlessly switches the political debate onto job creation, the auspiciously democratically ousted former President effectively renders himself legless and vulnerable. Which at once puts Kwame Gonja’s neck in the clean-shaven armpit of Mr. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, the Akufo-Addo Information Minister and the ruling New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Akyem-Ofoase-Ayirebi Constituency, in the Eastern Region. Which is also why Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah suavely pins Kwame Gonja’s gonads with the political and rhetorical equivalent of a nutcracker, when the former Multimedia’s primetime news anchor dares the former Atta-Mills’ Arch-Lieutenant to both give Ghanaians a verifiable list of jobs and employment avenues that Kwame Gonja created during the 8 years that he served as both Vice-President and substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, he floors the Bole-Bamboi native of the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region almost irreparably.
We predict without absolutely any fear of contradiction or correction that Kwame Gonja would not be able to come up with any worthwhile list of jobs and employment-creation avenues because the former J J Rawlings’ Communications Minister is a career politician and a thievish scam-artist and a taxpayer parasite who never really learned how to create any sustainable and livable-wage jobs. What is more, when he had not been busy taking bribes from Burkinabe contractors, like Mr. Djibril Kanazoe, Kwame Gonja had been neck-deep busy scheming to criminally replace his immediate boss, that is, having my good, old Uncle Tarkwa-Atta liquidated and then blaming and thanking Divine Providence, within the same breath, for wisely and inscrutably butt-kicking the fast-aging klutz out of the way, so that Kwame Gonja could be expeditiously elevated from his much-hated post of Presidential Spare-Tire to a veritable Presidential Incumbent.
In short, in the pathologically and clinically congenital imagination of the Bole-Bamboi, West-Gonja, native, job-grabbing is all that there is to the Presidency. To be certain, when he is not busy flying Guinea Fowls into the sovereign territorial space of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, you can bet your proverbial bottom-dollar that Kwame Gonja would be jampacking the Governing Board of his so-called Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) with his kinsmen, tribesmen and fellow northerners at the expense of the rest of us real job creators and Ghanaian taxpayers. The Information Minister also put his finger smack on the trigger, when Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah asked Kwame Gonja to give the general Ghanaian public at least a ballpark figure of the number of jobs that he created as President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana by juxtaposing the latter with the number of jobs created by his immediate successor (See “Tell Us What You Did For Ghanaian Youth[s] – Oppong Nkrumah Replies Mahama on Jobs and Unemployment” Peacefmonline.com 11/12/21).
Now, going into the 2024 General Election, this ought to be the winsome electioneering campaign strategy of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), which will be forcing the kleptocratic double-salary thieving Mahama Posse to match Team Mahamudu Bawumia “Development Project for Development Project” and “Job-Creation Figure” for “Job-Creation Figure.” This is what Kwame Gonja’s “Boot-for-Boot” threat of political showdown in the runup to the 2020 General Election ought to have squarely been about, not the kind of crude and infantile craving for physical fisticuffs that is the hallmark of street boys and urchins who have absolutely nothing to offer a society in dire need of massive material progress and development.
I bet that if the astute and erudite likes of Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah are able to force the agenda-impoverished members of the 2024 Mahama-for-President Campaign Team of downright charlatans to stick strictly to the relative performance track records of the country’s two major political parties, there is absolutely no way that a jaded and politically exhausted Kwame Gonja could be returned to Jubilee House come January 7, 2025 or anytime soon.
*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
November 14, 2021
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com
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