By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 2, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The decision by the Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to clear President John Dramani Mahama of any wrongdoing in the infamous case of his decision to accept a gift from a Burkinabe contractor who had just been awarded a contract by the Atta-Mills-led government of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) must be put at the front and center of the 2016 electioneering campaign by all parties participating in the general election, especially the Akufo-Addo-led main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “Ford Gift: CHRAJ Verdict ‘Problematic’ – Emile Short” Classfmonline.com/Ghanaweb.com 9/30/16).

It ought to constitute the central plank of the various political parties contesting the National Democratic Congress, because the NDC, since its inception, has self-righteously made the war against official corruption its raison d’être. But, of course, revelations over the past several months regarding the Abacha-Rawlings Heist has proven beyond the traditional iota of any doubt that, indeed, the National Democratic Congress may be the most corrupt major political party in the country. In the Abacha-Rawlings Heist, the pontifical Founding-Father of the NDC and Ghana’s longest-ruling military dictator, personally confessed to a Nigerian media reporter that he had, indeed, received an amount of at least $2 million from Gen. Sani Abacha, his Nigerian dictatorial counterpart during the late 1990s.

Chairman Jerry John Rawlings has vehemently denied the widely rumored payola reception for nearly twenty years now. He once even retorted to a public query made by the globally renowned Nigerian Nobel Literature Prize Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, with the following terse verbal salvo: “Arrant Nonsense!” And so we now know that for some twenty years, the self-righteous Chairman Rawlings was living a lie for which he had summarily executed scores of Ghanaian citizens, both soldiers and civilians, between 1979 and most of the 1980s. but that is not all that there is to the Abacha-Rawlings Heist. For starters, the man who hand-delivered the payola money, stashed in a briefcase, directly to an eager Chairman Rawlings at the Osu Castle, the former seat of governance, claims that he had, in fact, delivered the whopping amount of $5 million and not the $2 million maintained by the bloody recipient.

In other words, the truth regarding the fact of whether, indeed, Chairman Rawlings received $5 million in a briefcase and not the $2 million that he claims to have received from his Nigerian counterpart lies somewhere in-between the two divergent narratives. So far, Chairman Rawlings’ Chief-of-Staff at the time, Nana Ato Dadzie, and one of the infamous Ahwoi Brothers who presently chairs the University of Ghana’s governing board, The University Council, has also vehemently denied any knowledge of Gen. Abacha’s gift. And so now it all boils down to what Americans call the payola recipient’s word against the word of the payola courier or messenger. And in all likelihood, the patent liar here is, you guessed right, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings.

And so now the Mahama Payola Question boils down to the fact of whether the decision by CHRAJ’s Chairman to exonerate the President of the charge of being culpable of receiving a payola from Mr. Djibril (Gibril) Kanazoe, in the form of a 2010 Limited Edition Ford Expedition SUV has validity. And here, also, the pointedly simple answer is: Definitely Not! Definitely not because two salient and incontrovertible factors are in play here, namely, President Mahama’s own admission that, indeed, he did receive a business-related gift from the Burkinable contractor who had just been awarded a contract by the Mills-Mahama government. And two, the clear and incontrovertible establishment by CHRAJ of the fact that President Mahama’s decision to receive the Ford Expedition gift from Mr. Kanazoe clearly “violated the gift-policy regime for public officers.”

We have yet to be publicly and expressly told precisely what this gift-policy regime for public officers entails. Ultimately, what is at stake here is the credibility of President Mahama to command the respect of both the people who granted him the mandate to govern the country in the polling booth, to wit, Ghanaian voters, and his cabinet appointees for whom, by the way, not quite long ago, Mr. Mahama laid down clear rules governing the reception of gifts, as a means of drastically reducing the astronomical level of official corruption, curtail conflict-of-interest incidents in a bid to waging a successful war against corruption and the deleterious compromising of government trust.

Well, so far, not many Ghanaian legal experts and statesmen and women are of the opinion that when it comes to leadership integrity, President Mahama’s Ford gift solicitation passes muster.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs