By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 26, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

My own father passed on at 72 years old, on Nov. 23, 2001, some 14 years ago; and so I fully appreciated the tragic passing of former Vice-President Aliu Mahama 11 years later on Nov. 16, 2012. On this occasion, though, I prefer to highlight what the scandalous failure of then-President John Agyekum-Kufuor has meant for the ironic sidelining of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) onto the proverbial gray margins of opposition political culture. This has become necessary because of those internal detractors who fault Nana Akufo-Addo for having consecutively failed to return the relatively more progressive and successful Fourth Republican political party in the country to power, without taking a necessary account of the fact that every relevant political decision and/or action is logically attended by consequences and/or reactions.

Going into Election 2008, I had given then-lame-duck President Kufuor every benefit of the doubt, in spite of his widely alleged playing of favorites with Mr. Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, his former diplomatic point man in Washingtin, DC., and at the time his recently resigned Minister of Trade and Industry and Special Presidential Initiatives (PSI). Even so, in principle, I had expected the exiting president to have publicly endorsed the man who had, in the words of Nana Akufo-Addo, the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, “faithfully, honestly and patriotically” served Mr. Kufuor as the latter’s arch-lieutenant and Vice-President of Ghana for 8 years or two consecutive terms in office, having also dutifully served as Acting-President on the legion occasions that the presidential incumbent was out of the country on official assignments and duties.
Of course, back then, I had vigorously argued in support of Mr. Kufuor’s flat refusal to publicly endorse his most functionally significant political associate, primarily because Alhaji Aliu Mahama had on both occasions that he served as Mr. Kufuor’s running-mate failed to massively attract the northern vote to the New Patriotic Party. Matters had also not been helped by the widely perceived involvement of Mr. Mahama – truthfully or otherwise – in the tragic chain of events leading to the regicide of the Overlord of Dagbon, Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani II. I tended, then, to believe that it was this most difficult and murky aspect of our national politics that had decidedly forced the hand of President Kufuor against any public endorsement of his Vice-President.

Later events, unfortunately, have forced me to thoroughly revise my initial take on the preceding issues, especially when the Kufuor-Kyerematen factionalists among the ranks of the New Patriotic Party’s constabulary began to cavalierly, conveniently and deliberately ignore the fact of the unmistakably negative impact that his seismic decision not to endorse Alhaji Mahama may very well have significantly contributed to the alienation or loss of the northern vote in the lead-up to Election 2008 and, again, in the lead-up to Election 2012 when the National Democratic Congress fielded then Vice-President John Dramani Mahama, who strategically managed to use Mr. Kufuor’s failure or refusal to endorse Vice-President Aliu Mahama against Nana Akufo-Addo, the 2012 New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate.

Already, the Rawlings posse had fairly successfully been able to tag the NPP as an Akan tribal organization. Mr. Kufuor’s apparently strategically misguided decision to blindly back Mr. Kyerematen, a fellow Akan and an Asante, to boot, even while publicly denying such charge, effectively ensured that Nana Akufo-Addo would be bereft of the requisite electoral support. And yet, the Kufuor partisans would shamelessly claim that the outgoing president left a verdant or fruitful legacy of the electoral support of at least 8 of the 10 regions of the country, a patently and flagrantly false claim. The reality here is that in evidently mischievously failing to publicly endorse the candidacy of Vice-President Mahama, Mr. Kufuor had pretty much succeeded in literally burning all the bridges before Akufo-Addo could arrive at them, let alone smugly presume to comfortably cross the same.

Anyway, in his press release paying tribute to Vice-President Aliu Mahama, Nana Akufo-Addo made mention of having first met Mr. Mahama some 24 years ago, while helping to organize and expand what was then known as the Danquah-Busia Memorial Club, which would lay the foundations of the present-day New Patriotic Party. As I read the preceding, I also wondered whether Nana Akufo-Addo had thought about facilitating the establishment of a Danquah-Busia-Dombo Foundation or Institute, dedicated to supporting research on the liberal-democratic ideals staunchly represented by these immortalized seminal leaders of postcolonial Ghanaian democratic culture. I also want to briefly add that perhaps the single most important attempt to remedy President Kufuor’s grossly misguided alienation of the northern vote was the decision by Nana Akufo-Addo to name Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia his running-mate and adamantly sticking with the latter through three consecutive presidential elections. Two presidential elections, as of this writing, of course.