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

As a press release issued by the New Patriotic Party’s Communications Directorate aptly pointed out in the wake of Tuesday’s presidential debate in the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale, Transitional-President John “Paradigm-Shift” Dramani Mahama brilliantly, albeit eerily, exposed himself for what Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, a former National Democratic Congress presidential candidate, has been poignantly elucidating in his running series of morally insightful articles on various Ghanaian media websites (See “Akufo-Addo Exposes Prez Mahama on 250 Cuban-Trained [Ghanaian] Doctors” Ghanaweb.com 10/31/12). And it is the greatly disturbing fact that the Mahama-Arthur government is about anything but honest and transparent dialogue with the Ghanaian people.

For instance, we are reliably informed that on August 18, 2011, the then-Vice-President Mahama signed a GH? 160 million with Havana to train some 250 Ghanaian medical students for the duration of 6 years. And as Nana Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, rightly pointed out, that humongous figure worked out to GH? 105, 000 annually per each medical trainee.

Surprisingly, on Tuesday night in Tamale, however, President Mahama shamelessly told a global television, radio and face book (trimulcast) audience that, in reality, it costs only $5,000.00 or approximately GH? 8,000.00 per year to train a single Ghanaian student doctor.

What the preceding analysis means is that the erstwhile Mills-Mahama government of the populist National Democratic Congress deliberately overcharged the Ghanaian taxpayer in excess of GH? 100,000 per a Cuban-trained Ghanaian doctor. What the foregoing further implies is that rather than signing the country onto the officially announced GH? 160 million deal, the actual cost involved ought not to have exceeded $7.5 million (US Dollars) or GH? 13 million in 2011 figures. In sum, and by President Mahama’s own personal testimony at the IEA-sponsored presidential debate in Tamale, the NDC Government duped the Ghanaian taxpayer to the whopping tune of at least GH? 150 million.

In other words, the Ghanaian taxpayer had to fork up at least 90-percent more than the training of the 250 Ghanaian medical students in Cuba was worth. The preceding, needless to say, gives further credence to allegations bordering on Mr. Mahama and his wife, Mrs. Lordina Mahama, having squirreled and criminally stashed some $172 million of public funds into their Swiss Bank accounts. The foremost Ghanaian couple has yet to address the foregoing character question. Further couple the preceding with the Mahama-led STX housing scandal, and the pattern of alleged corrupt criminality on the part of the First Couple could not be more striking.

In other words, a pathologically mendacious President Mahama unwittingly walked into his own trap and hoisted with his own petard in Tamale on Tuesday night. And it is almost certain that Ghanaians would have been exposed to even far more shocking revelations, if the four-and-odd-hour debate had been more productively narrowed down to a contest between the two main contenders for the presidency of Election 2012. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no time to talk about a presidential impeachment, other than to issue a clarion call on Ghanaian voters to massively vote for the removal of a scandal-blighted President Mahama and his so-called National Democratic Congress.

Indeed, as Nana Akufo-Addo aptly pointed out on Tuesday night in Tamale, naked theft seems to have become the policy cornerstone and prime agenda of the Mahama-Arthur-led National Democratic Congress. For according to figures released by the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), it costs approximately only GH? 30,000 per year to train a Ghanaian doctor at home, a humongously far cry from the annual figure of GH? 105,000 that the then-Vice-President Mahama misled the nation into believing to be far more expensive than the financially and morally outrageous Cuban program.

The latter shenanigan also explains the woeful underfunding and under-equipping of our national medical colleges. And, somehow, President Mahama wants Ghanaians to believe that he has the interest of the conscientious and efficient education of their children and grandchildren at heart.

Anyway, just as we were preparing to go to press, an article titled “Cost of Training Doctors in Ghana: GMA Sets [the] Record Straight” appeared on the Modernghana.com website, in which the General-Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr. Frank Serebuor, observed having sighted a forensically sustainable document indicating the fact that it costs about $50,000.00 (US Dollars) to fully train a Ghanaian physician in Cuba, and approximately $36,000.00 (US Dollars) to train the same Ghanaian physician at home. What the foregoing clearly implies is that while both major presidential contenders got their figures wrong, Nana Akufo-Addo was more accurate in observing that it costs far less to train a Ghanaian doctor at home than in Cuba! It also cements widespread public sentiment that when it comes to frugally and wisely investing the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money in profitable ventures, Transitional-President John “Paradigm-Shift” Dramani Mahama cannot be trusted.

If, indeed, per his own verbal testimony on Tuesday night, in Tamale, President Mahama now concedes that the Mills-Mahama-Arthur government deliberately overcharged the people by a whopping $55,000.00 per head (or GH? 150 million, depending on which version of the Cuban narrative the reader/critic chooses to go by) in order to train 250 Ghanaian doctors in Cuba, then the latter sum(s) of money ought to be promptly returned to our national coffers, pronto, before the December 7 general election.

And you really thought Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome was the only grand-thief of Fourth-Republican Ghana? Go figure!

*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 “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###