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



President John Dramani Mahama continues to curiously hope against hope that Ghanaians have, somehow, so soon forgotten that for twenty long years he played dutiful ticket-collector on the rickety Yutong bus recklessly driven by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings that ran our country into the current morass of acute water shortage. Which is why his temerity to faulting former President John Agyekum-Kufuor for distributing water-jerricans to Ghanaians, instead of finding a foresighted and more constructive solution to this chronic national headache is peevishly disturbing (See "We Would Work to Eliminate Kufuor Gallons - Prez. Mahama" Ghanaweb.com 2/25/14).



Were he honest with himself, Mr. Mahama would rather profusely have lauded Mr. Kufuor for supplying the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale with more volumes of potable drinking water in the eight short years that he presided over the affairs of our country, than the "jerry/jerri" Rawlings-led tandem governments of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) combined.



It is also rather pathetic for Mr. Mahama to pontifically brag about the Kpong Water Supply Expansion Project and the Kpong-Accra Water Purchase Project, both of which landmark projects were originally started by the brutally slain Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. It is imperative for Ghanaians to be constantly reminded of the fact that the founding-father of Mr. Mahama's party was the man who summarily executed the then already deposed and thoroughly humiliated leader of the erstwhile National Redemption Council (NRC) and the Supreme Military Council (SMC I) for the dubious crime of wreaking unprecedented corruption and havoc on the pates of a decent and faultingly longsuffering Ghanaian populace.



Then also, Mr. Mahama announced that two additional projects, namely, the Teshie Desalination Plant and the Accra-Tema Water Project would combine to deliver 65.3 billion gallons of water daily, to the teeming polpulation of the Greater-Accra Metropolitan Region, and thus drastically ease the current acute water shortage. Needless to say, this quite generous gesture would be to be deemed impeccably laudable had Ghanaians not had more than enough of the vacuous pontifical mendacities of the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress since at least 1992.



We need to also remember that Ghana is globally renowned for being the inventive cradle of Ananse stories. And when he hits the sack with his wife and our own Sister Lordina tonight, Mr. Mahama is almost certain to laugh off his pelvis silly for having so deftly put on the kind of roadshow that Mr. Rawlings, even in his AFRC heydays, could not have fathomed, let alone execute.



Indeed, as a friend confided to me recently, Mr. Mahama may well be clinically suffering from "Developmental Dyslexia." In other words, the former NDC-MP for Bole-Bamboi may be suffering from pathologically reading his policy speeches backwards. For it is almost certain that the current acute water shortage is apt to get even worse than ever before. After all, didn't he make the same "Lordinastic" promise about energy rationing, otherwise known as "Dumsor"? It is almost as if Godfather Rawlings had sewn a talismanic jinx onto the tongue of Little Dramani. The more laudable promises he makes, the more miserable Ghanaians become.



Maybe it is the "drama" part of the name "Dramani" that is causing the trouble. Or is it the "hammer" phonetic of the "Mahama"? So, perhaps, abbreviating both his middle and last names to "Omani" (Citizen) and "Maaha" (Goodday) would straighten up matters. All this, of course, is tongue-in-cheek. I actually like the guy sometimes. Not always, naturally.



Then there is also this bunk-talk about "boreholes" which annoys me more than all else. We might as well "Galamsey" it across the entire nation. Indeed, if it did solve any long-term water-shortage problems, other than the eternally beneficent one behind my paternal great-grandmother's Kyebi homestead, we wouldn't be still talking about it. In fact, boreholes are more dangerous than the old, death-trap mine pits that made the Atiwa-Atweredu mountains so dangerous to farm while I was growing up at Akyem-Asiakwa.



Indeed, long before I left the country, some three decades ago, Canadian-Aid International was boring holes all over the northern-half of the country. And so I don't suppose for a split-second that the most effective solution to our water-supply problem is more boreholes. To be frank with the dear reader, nothing could be more boring.



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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

Feb. 25, 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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