Policy Analyst and Ashesi University Lecturer Dr Lloyd Amoah says President John Mahama reduced the State of the Nation address he delivered last week to “standup comedy”.

Contributing to motivational Speaker, Dr Mensa Otabil’s concerns that the country, at all strata, appears to revel in trivialising serious and weighty matters and reducing them to jokes, Dr Amoah told XYZ Breakfast Show host Moro Awudu that President Mahama is guilty of Dr Otabil’s charge.

“We seem to be oblivious to the dangers that are lurking around us. We are laughing about them. Look at the State of the Nation [Address], the president reduced it to a standup comedy, essentially, with him as the head when we have pressing national problems that lie at the core of our very survival as a people, as ethnic groups as a nation and so I think that the good pastors is attempting to alert us to the dangers that we face”.

President’s use of “tweaa” in Parliament

President Mahama, while delivering the State of the Nation Address in Parliament last week, intermittently created humour. At one instance, he jovially said: “Herrr order! I’m not your co-equal” and then asked in jest, “who said tweaa?”

“Tweaa” is a local Akan version of pshawing and it has become a quintessential expression for expressing dissatisfaction and disapproval in both formal and informal conversation ever since the District Chief Executive of Ahafo Ano South, Gabriel Barimah created a spectacle at a public event after he had been heckled with the word.

The word and the embarrassing spectacle have been the toast of Satirists since the debacle. They’ve been reproduced in songs, videos and literary jokes which are replete on social media.

Speaker of Parliament Edward Doe Adjaho had to restrain MPs from using the word after it almost became the norm for raising objections on the floor. The President’s jovial use of the word while delivering his State of the Nation Address followed the Speaker’s outlawing of it.

According to Pastor Otabil, rather than revel in such jokes, Ghanaians must be serious about weighty matters, a concern shared by Dr Amoah.

Presidency responds to Dr Lloyd Amoah

However a Presidential Staffer, Dr Michael Kpessah-Whyte told Moro Awudu that Dr Amoah’s conclusion about the president’s posture during the State of the Nation Address lacks bases.

“I mean, I don’t know how he came to this kind of conclusion. Has he read the content of the president’s statement? The president delivered a two-hour State of the Nation Address, the president mindful of the fact that this particular state of the nation address is pretty long, decided to intersperse the address with comic relief, with jokes and especially also because he was in the midst of his former colleagues so as to arrest their attention span, kept them listening, kept them engaged through the process. It doesn’t take too critical a mind to realise that the President was being very strategic in ensuring that his audience, that is members of Parliament, were with him throughout the address”, Dr Kpessah-Whyte said.

He said: “…It’s pretty baffling that anybody would want to come and basically say the President was engaged in comedy. I mean that comment itself is a demonstration; in fact it is an apt illustration, of Mensa Otabil’s point that we are a nation of jokers. How do you come and make a joke out of a President’s serious presentation on a basis of a claim that we are not serious”.