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

The September 5 announcement by Mr. John Abdulai Jinapor, spokesman for President John Dramani Mahama, that his boss was embarking on a “Thank-You Tour” of some five neighboring West African states, once again, sadly and amply demonstrates the grim fact of Mr. Paradigm-Shift having absolutely no progressive vision, whatsoever, for the socioeconomic and cultural advancement of Ghana (See “Mahama Visits Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina on ‘Thank You Tour’” Ghanaweb.com 9/5/12).

For starters, it took our transitional-president four long weeks, following the death of his predecessor, to come public with a policy agenda of his own, supposedly, aimed at moving the country forward. And as the main opposition New Patriotic Party aptly indicated, what Mr. Mahama passed off in the guise of a policy agenda was a thoroughly jaded and shamefully incoherent snippets of a wish list none of whose items, at best, offered anything more than cold comfort to the average Ghanaian. This may well explain why the former Communication Minister under former President Jerry John Rawlings has been weirdly insistent on prolonging the funeral and mourning period for the late President John Evans Atta-Mills.

Interestingly, this weird behavior on the part of Mr. Mahama comes just about the same moment that Ghanaians are being advised to economically and temporally modify the way in which we grieve, mourn and observe the deaths of our relatives, friends and associates. And this is weird, because I can’t even remember either the first or last time that any Ghanaian leader went touring and joyriding through the West African sub-region, thanking any of the presidents and/or heads-of-state of our neighboring countries for attending the funerals of Presidents Kwame Nkrumah, Hilla Limann and Prime Minister K. A. Busia.

And so Mr. Mahama may do himself and his National Democratic Congress a lot of good with some tangible explanation, especially regarding the cost-effectiveness of such anomalous – to speak much less of a quixotic – enterprise. You see, we are incurably Ghanaian, a proud nation of fairly honest people who like to believe that the intellectual caliber of our leaders is much, much higher than borderline cases. And I make no apologies for making the foregoing statement, and hasten to promptly explain why, for the sake of goodwill and fair-play, of course.

The fact of the matter is that if, indeed, Mr. Mahama genuinely desired to express his profound gratitude to the leaders of our five neighboring countries – viz., Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Nigeria – he would have far more effectively done so by dispatching or cabling the Ghanaian ambassadors and/or diplomats already resident in the various countries. And unless it can be credibly proven that the governments of our neighboring countries will be footing the bill for this white-elephant of a “Thank-You Tour,” then Mr. Mahama and his arch-lieutenants may have to render accounts to Parliament, I am afraid. For frankly speaking, it is rather insulting that a man who doesn’t believe that our human resource- and mineral-rich nation can readily accept the fact of its bounden obligation to affording our youths free education of the highest caliber, evidently believes firmly that the most progressive policy agenda of his stewardship merely entails needlessly dragging out the lavish funeral celebration of his recently deceased predecessor, for reasons that have obviously far more to do with his own vaulting political ambitions, and selfish interest, than either the image or interests of the nation at large.

Well, I have a critical theory on this so-called Mahama Thank-You Tour, and it is not a palatable one as, I suppose, could have been readily predicted by any diehard supporter of the so-called National Democratic Congress. And the theory is simply that Ghana’s accidental president is dangerously testing the endurance capacity and/or tolerance level vis-à-vis the extent to which freedom- and democracy-loving Ghanaians are willing to allow the Bole-Bamboi megalomaniac to bend the clearly defined rules of democratic governance stipulated by our 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution. If so, then Mr. Mahama is definitely in for a rude awakening, as New Yorkers are wont to say.

You see, having made it publicly, and brazenly, clear, at least since Election 2008, that short of divine intervention, he does not intend to voluntarily dismount from the “Horse-of-State” that is the Ghanaian presidency, this clinically desperate man has decided to, literally, put his money where his mouth is by secretly soliciting military assistance from the aforementioned Thank-You Tour Countries, in case Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan’s adamant and dastardly attempt to rigging the December polls in favor of his paymasters goes awry, which is almost certain to happen, based on what we know about the same thus far.

In short, Mr. Mahama’s so-called Thank-You Tour is a quite clever, albeit patently childish, disguise for his vigilante agenda. Already, Dr. Afari-Gyan has publicly stated to anybody who would listen, that he has absolutely no qualms in paying the ultimate sacrifice in order to guarantee the “democratic” entrenchment of a trust- and confidence-deficient National Democratic Congress regime. Whether, indeed, Mr. Paradigm-Shift Mahama can force Ghanaians into enduring another long, slavish nightmare of the kind visited on us by Mr. Rawlings for some two decades, remains to be seen.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.