Former President Jerry Rawlings has chastised President John Mahama’s inability to keep “the bad ones” and “crookish monsters” away from the Presidency.

“Both the good and the bad are around him. He’s unable to kick the bad ones away and I guess it’s because he doesn’t know about some of them and their nature”, Rawlings told a special congregation of the University of Development Studies, Saturday, at which ceremony an honorary doctorate degree was conferred on him by the school, for his personal contribution to its founding.

Directly advising President Mahama, who was also at the ceremony, to learn to keep the “crookish monsters” and “greedy bad ones” away from him, Rawlings counseled that African leaders do not survive if they go about everything with a gentle posture as President Mahama appears to be doing.

“Ohhhh African politics, you don’t do it like that”, Rawlings warned Mr. Mahama, albeit jovially, with intermittent spices of laughter.

He said despite the President’s austere nature, the “crookish monsters” around him are living profligate lifestyles which risk plunging the presidency into the doldrums.

“The president sometimes joins his car personally to go and see his Dentist; I know it; he doesn’t know I know; today I’m saying it. He drives himself. He won’t do it again since I’ve made it known [but] some of the crooks – he doesn’t know - around him, if they are going to the toilet or the bathroom, they will use a dispatch rider”, Rawlings fumed.

He said: “There are very disciplined people who are trying hard around him, but sometimes their efforts are negated by sometimes the crookish monsters some of us know about”.

“I have to be very frank with my President today with you as my witnesses and I think it’s important that we do something about this issue of greed and opportunistic tendencies as people, as brothers,” Rawlings suggested and added that: “I love this country intensely you know. And I love the people of this country intensely”.