By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The Overlord of Gonjaland, Yagbon-Wura Tuntumba Boresa, II, may not know this, but the best protection for Citizen Mahama is for the President to think and behave as if he really cares about the people who took the time and pains to travel to the polling booth to cast their ballots and elect him as their leader for the next four years. I sincerely doubt it, but if he works hard enough and does not cavalierly play "dead dog" with the needs, interests and aspirations of the people, Little Dramani may just be lucky enough to have his mandate renewed come December 2016.

I can almost feel the Yagbon-Wura's anguish upon learning about the alleged assassination attempt on the life of, perhaps, the most distinguished son of Gonjaland underneath the 147-km macadamized Fufulso-Sawla highway, but I sincerely doubt his claim that Little Dramani is the best President in the postcolonial history of Ghana (See "Yagbon-Wura Condemns Mahama's Assassination Ploy" Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/7/15). I am cocksure that Mr. Mahama, himself, does not believe such fulsome hyperbole. To be certain, the man likely listened to the Yagbon-Wura with amused contempt. Very likely, the President was deeply abstracted and pondering how to extricate himself from the Galamsey Mine-Pit of the raging doctors' strike into which he had unwisely sank himself, and out of which he does not seem capable of extricating himself anytime soon. At least not in the next couple of days.

I can, however, perfectly agree with Yagbon-Wura Tuntumba Boresa, II, if we but for a moment decide to suspend reality or disbelief by pretending that today was March 6, 1957 and President John Dramani Mahama were Ghana's first postcolonial leader. What I can agree with, unreservedly, is the incontrovertible fact that, indeed, Little Dramani is the most powerful Ghanaian politician presently. One would, however, be hard put to envisage the Bole-Bamboi petty chieftain as the most important personality or citizen in the country at the moment. Among dead dogs, maybe. Still, I am not ready to speculate, because I am not the least bit interested in the purely subjective art of the contest of personalities.

Indeed, if he had critically and sedulously listened to the Supreme Ruler of Gonjaland - and here, of course, I am thinking of the "Lion King" theatrical performance and its filmic animation, Little Dramani would have actually and subtextually heard "Osagyefo" Tuntumba Boresa, II, rudely slap him in the face with the rather embarrassing plaint that in his nearly 7 years at the Presidency, the former Atta-Mills arch-lieutenant has yet to fully appreciate the fact that the most impressive civilizations, the world over, were built around the theory of the easy accessibility to potable water. Underneath the resonant echoes of ritual formalities and absent-minded pleasantries was the following tired maxim: "Come on, Gonja Boy, you are not too stolid to appreciate the stark elementary fact that a soldier walks on his stomach. Or are you?"

Of course, the foregoing interrogative reprimand was in reference to the age-old Damongo Water Crisis. "The Damongo water situation is still the same," and has been the same since Chairman Jerry John Rawlings cut your Coca-Cola-stained teeth on the political whetstone of the Provisional / National Democratic Congress (P/NDC). "I mean, when you slam your bedroom door tight-shut at night and you throw your dead-dog self into the arms of Asiedu-Nketia's kid sister, what do you think about? Making legions of babies without thinking about where to give them their first baths on Earth?"

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