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

At a recent press briefing at the Flagstaff House, Information Minister Mahama Ayariga was reported to have told the media that the embattled president of Ghana was fervidly engaged in a daily prayerful meditation over the failing health of legendary South African leader Mr. Nelson R. Mandela (See "President Mahama Prays For Nelson Mandela" MyJoyOnline.com 6/27/13).

It is not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the scarcely fathomable picture of the man who deviously collaborated with Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Ghana's Electoral Commissioner, in stealing nearly 4 million ballots cast in Election 2012, in order to have himself falsely declared winner of last year's presidential election. It is just that Mr. John Dramani Mahama is too politically tainted and spiritually tormented, himself, to so casually presume to pray for the physical redemption of the man who actively and forthrightly spearheaded South Africa's liberation struggle for more than a half-century.

Rather, what Mr. Mahama ought to be doing is some serious soul-searching, particularly after he recently sought to rudely second-guess the integrity of the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel hearing the Akufo-Addo/NPP Election 2012 Petition by insisting, against common sense and juridical logic, that the only acceptable verdict was one that unreservedly applauded his treasonable crime of hijacking the sacred mandate of the Ghanaian electorate.

As one who was the only non-South African honorary member of the African National Council (ANC) at The City College of the City University of New York, from 1986 to 1990, I can confidently assert here that were he in a competent state to be able to candidly share his thoughts and opinions on Ghana's Election 2012, Mr. Mandela would have roundly condemned the Bole-Bamboi native for so cavalierly presuming that he could so cheaply railroad the will and wishes of the Ghanaian electorate, an inalienable civil right that the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate spent nearly half of his most vital years immured on Robben Island to secure.

Obviously, it appears as if Mr. Ayariga and his boss are hell-bent on making hay out of any diversionary relief and reprieve that the Madiba's age-related ill-health has to offer them.

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

Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York July 4, 2013 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net ###