*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, PhD

President John Dramani Mahama, flagbearer for the ruling NDC has urged his
supporters to forget about Nana Addo’s ‘free educations’ mantra. ‘Because he [Nana
Addo] wants power, he is preaching free education, but I say it is ‘sakawa’ and
shouldn’t be trusted,’ President Mahama said” (Abridged from Ghanaweb, November 29,
2012)


Mahama had free education
His rich father didn’t pay fees
His 19 children had free education
Mahama’s 31 children & counting
Will have free education
Mahama had free education
But cruelly parodies it as sakawa
Mahama’s visionary injunction
His seductive narrative
His evocative ingratitude
His deceitful declaration
Is free education is sakawa
Nkrumah’s free education
That rescued Northerners
From savage stereotyping
The watchmen
The farm laborers
The washermen
The buga buga police
The carriers of it all
Of Harmattan-time water
Of putrid night soil
Of raining season firewood
Ah! Nkrumah’s free education
Brimming with hubris
Mahama pedagogies hypocrisies

Daughters & sons of the South
Time to summon history
History as meditation
History as science
History as a bridge
Between the North and South
Of Nkrumah’s free education
That has made the Mahamas
That has made the Iddrisus
That has made the Ayarigas
That has made the Bagbins
Presidents
Vice presidents
Ministers of state
Tractor-thieves
Let us summon history
To speak to free education
Free education
Has been good to the North
It will be good for all
It will be better for all

History as meditation
Of Nkrumah’s free education
That has made the Mahamas
Let it inspire all
History that speaks truth
That speaks to us
About our quotidian struggles
About our archives of pain
About our memories of dreams
About dreams deferred, detained
Shallow politicians
Pen-armed robbers
Who wield faith as history
Who wield kinship as nation

Northern NDC politicians
Benefitted from education
They are brimming with hubris
Like vultures in flight
Over carcasses of history
Besmeared with corruption
Bonded by tractor tribalism
Bait the South
Braying non-free education
John Mahama has no message
No platform
No ideology
Ah! Mahama said it all
He is a Northerner
Northerners must vote for him

Ghanaians let us unclench truth
Let us speak truth to power
Those who bait it us
Those educated hypocrites
Who bait us with their untruths
Let us unclench our fists of truth
To flood all untruths
Daughters and sons
Of the South
You need free education
As much as the North does
Daughters and sons of the South
Summon history
History as meditation
History as guidance

*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained
oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania
with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In
her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical”
poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com My poems and essays on Ghanaweb
and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or
scholarly work without my written permission.