By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Of course, his wild and numerous extramarital affairs are widely known and documented and discussed by the media; and so the half-hearted denial by Mr. John Jinapor, the presidential aide, that Mr. John Dramani Mahama is not engaged in the business of shamelessly buying votes with taxpayer-purchased vehicles is so hollow as to make one wonder whether Mr. Jinapor takes Ghanaian voters for fools (See “Prez Mahama Not Aware of Car Distribution – John Jinapor” Ghanaweb.com 11/26/12).

Speaking on Citi-Fm Radio in Accra recently, Mr. Jinapor is reported to have made the following vehement assertion: “It’s inaccurate, it is blatantly false, and the President does not distribute vehicles. The President is unaware of what Mr. Kennedy Agyapong is accusing him of.”

In essence, what the New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Assin-North is saying is that hirelings of President Mahama have been trolling the campuses of the nation’s universities and colleges distributing Kia 110-model salon cars to some selected female students, in a bid to getting the beneficiaries to both vote for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), as well as recruit supporters for the president. Mr. Agyapong’s accusation was reportedly made while the NPP firebrand was campaigning for his party in the Western Region about two weeks ago.

What is significant to note here is that Mr. Jinapor is in no way denying the fact that, indeed, elements supportive of the Mahama-Arthur campaign machine have stormed university campuses across the country and actually distributed Kia model-110 salon cars to some selected female students, in a bid to getting the latter to vote for our Caretaker-President. Rather, Mr. Jinapor is simply and lamely claiming that his paymaster is not aware of this viciously calculated vote-buying racket.

Needless to say, we know for a fact that Mr. Jinapor is a bold-faced liar because exactly what President Mahama and his cabinet appointees and prominent party hacks have been doing in the lead-up to Election 2012, has been to desperately bribe sections of the country’s civil society with vehicles and laptop computers.

Barely two weeks ago, for instance, Mr. Mahama presented members of the National House of Chiefs with a dozen Toyota Land Cruisers in Kumasi, while these invested traditional rulers were at a conference to deliberate on issues of moment to our national development. Back then, both this author and the National Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party decried both the timing of the “gift-horses” and the fact that they were presented in the name of President Mahama, rather than being on behalf of the Ghanaian taxpayer at large.

Then just last week, Ghanaians woke up to also learn to their amusement that the Mahama-Arthur government had embarked on the patently desperate exercise of distributing some 2,000 laptop computers to selected schools in the Volta Region. The fact that such gesture had not been initiated at the beginning of the Mills-Mahama tenure, alongside the rather risible distribution of their one-size-fits-all school uniforms, made the gesture all the more tacky, or unseemly, and morally insulting, particularly when one also recognized the fact that no systematic and/or meaningful programs appeared to have been pre-established for the recipients.

We have to also quickly point out that but for the ingenious sleuthing of Mr. Kennedy Agyapong, Ghanaians would still be in the dark about the epic scandal that is the Mahama-supported Woyome judgment-debt payments.

And so, yes, while Mr. Agyapong ought to be promptly reprimanded for allegedly calling the president “an idiot,” as Mr. Jinapor claims, nevertheless, the abjectly unwise and profligate use of our national resources for the selfish advancement of the vaulting political ambitions of Mr. Mahama ought to be equally condemned in no uncertain terms. And, of course, it is squarely on the basis of such wanton abuse of the privileges of his office that we call on all well-meaning and patriotic Ghanaian voters to massively reject the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress on December 7.

Indeed, it is rather ironic that President Mahama would make a routine habit of the very criminal act of gifting salon cars to female university and college students that got Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong summarily executed by firing squad by the then-Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in June 1979. How little Ghanaian leaders learn from the fatal mistakes of the predecessors!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 2, 2012
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