President John Evans Atta Mills is a man who is very interesting and one who I think should be studied. Over the last month, the flagbearer of the opposition NPP came up with a name for Prof. Mills , ‘Professor Do Little’. Immediately I heard the new accolade of our President, I wondered how come I wasn’t able to confer that accolade on Prof. Mills before Nana Addo did, because I had long noticed that Prof. Mills was a man who was destined to do very very little in his governance of this nation. This realization did not arise as a result of a dream or vision but as a result of the analysis of the man’s actions and statements which reflects his thoughts and psychology.

In fact the first realization I had was the fact that Prof. Do Little was happy doing little and with such a psychology it would be an unprecedented miracle for him to do more. This initial realization which led me to conclude that our President was indeed destined to do little was vindicated by the man himself who on his return to Ghana after cooling off in the States stated proudly that he is happy to do little.

And yes he is happy to do very little and no one can blame him because he has been given the privilege by Ghanaians to rule for four whole years, he has absolute power to decide whether to do more and uplift our country to where we ought to be or to do very little and pride himself with little achievements like building boreholes in mental facilities.

And oh, on that subject, let’s not forget that our President in full pump and pageantry went to the Accra Psychiatric Hospital to commission a borehole. But what do we really expect from a man who says he is happy to do little or a man who is in fact doing little. When such a man leads you, developing boreholes in health centres become great national accomplishments which must be heralded with vuvuzelas and carnivals.
And yes this psyche of doing little and celebrating it has characterized the NDC administration of President Mills since the very first day it assumed office. If we remember, Press Conferences upon Press Conferences were held amidst Newspaper Headlines etc. to announce the arrival of crude oil in our country. For the first time in a very very long while, the date of arrival of crude became something of major national importance and significance and when it finally landed oh, how great an event it was. NDC propagandists were all over TV, Radio, Newspapers, the Internet, the Streets etc. heralding the arrival of crude oil as a major achievement of the Mills government something many believed was even worth getting into the Guinness Book of Records.
Recently, hundreds if not thousands of advertisement slots were bought with state money on Radio, TV, in newspapers and on the web to announce the commissioning of less than a quarter of the Road that is supposed to link Achimota to Ofankor by the whole Vice-President of the Republic of Ghana. It is even more amazing that even this road is not a project that can be claimed in any sense by the Mills/ Mahama administration; yet the commissioning of a very small stretch was heralded, drummed and trumpeted as if Ghana was about to commission its first inter-city tunnel. The hasty commissioning of that stretch of the overhead has even further worsened the traffic situation on the road to Achimota; that what we get for electing people who are happy doing little.
So Prof. Mills is very happy; in spite of all Ghana’s problems and the failure of his administration to deal decisively with those problems, he is happy. He is happy to provide tents, ideally meant for Refugees and the displaced for Senior High School students even though he promised while on campaign in 2008 to build 300 Secondary Schools when he is elected (http://news.myjoyonline.com/politics/200809/20981.asp ). That promise clearly has been thrown to the dogs (sorry cats), maybe during his campaign he was thinking big but certainly not this time.
Prof. Mills is happy that his inaction or should I say little action has led Ghana into a dispute over our God given oil reserves because he failed to heed to an advice given months before that particular oil well – the Dzata -1 well was discovered and the dispute arose, to set up a joint border commission with our neighboring countries (http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=158356). He is happy that today we stand a great chance of losing substantial parts of our oil reserves because he is do little!
In fact am even sure he is happy with Ghana’s latest B credit rating; after all he would happy we didn’t get a D or is that not what the logic according to His Excellency Mills would say?
One thing which is also clear is that Prof. Mills is not only ‘do little’ but also very Petty, in other words he is preoccupied with little thoughts and petty things. If this was not so, we would not have him going round the whole country telling people that whether they like it or not he is the President at a time when Ghana could not even import crude. Obviously, President Mills sees the presidency not as a role but as a title and has no option but to remind all of us constantly that he is the President and the only one for that matter.
Prof. President Mills is a very petty man and anyone who has listened to him over the years even before he became President would notice this. Only someone who is petty would go into his home region and claim that the fishing industry in that region is suffering because the sitting President does not come from the coast and has cited all the big cold stores in his home region when in fact he, Prof. Mills who supervised the divestiture of most State Owned Cold Stores in the Central Region while he was Vice-President. Prof. Mills is petty in every detail; he even went round trying to prove his competency by making the point that he was not born with a silver-spoon in his mouth.
As President however, it seems this pettiness has even grown larger. As a way of showing modesty, Prof. Mills moved in a bus with some appointees followed by a convoy of 4x4’s to a workshop and returned with his ministers in the 4x4’s which followed them; meaning that instead of saving cost Prof. Mills even caused the state by the addition of the bus they rode in. That is how petty our President can get at times. Since exposing his ‘modesty’ in such a manner, he has never travelled in a bus again; I thought that the best way to expose his modesty was to make it a policy to travel in buses everywhere he goes.
So is anyone surprised that Prof. Mills aka Prof. Do Little would go as far as snubbing the leader of the largest opposition party to make a point? No, I am not in the least surprised and I expected him to do such things long ago. This is a President who has not on a single occasion credited the NPP which ruled this country for eight years for anything good and even goes to the extent of claiming things the NPP began and even sought funding for as his initiatives; so why does anyone think that he would acknowledge Nana Addo when the two meet at a function bearing in mind that Nana Addo is the man who seeks to take his precious ‘title’ of President away?
It is in his basic character to hold on to little insignificant things so it’s not easy to hide it; we all remember how he went to town throwing tantrums during a meeting with the GJA few days after Nana Akufo-Addo had arrived in Ghana to rapturous welcome. This is a President who trumpets so loudly anytime he is in his home region that he is an indigene and goes to another region to trumpet the fact that region is his second home leaving all other regions in a limbo over which position they place in the President’s order of ‘home regions’.
Now it’s should be obvious that Prof. Mills himself is happy about he being Prof. Do Little and oh, he has even stated that himself so why are his supporters furious over that title? Why are they wailing more that bereaved? Maybe because even though they support the NDC and Prof. Mills, they don’t want him to do little. They want their President and leader to do more and think big. They know that it is only in getting a reputation of someone who does more, that would ensure success for the NDC.

And yes, that message should go to Prof. Mills. Ghanaians are not happy with a President who does little. Prof. Mills could have been happy if was President of his nuclear family with he being someone who does little but as a President of the Republic of Ghana, he cannot and should not be happy with doing little because he was not voted to do little, he was voted to do much much more! Ghanaians are not content with his do little record, we want an achiever; someone who is never content no matter the achievements he chalks; we need someone who would set his sights high and think big and someone who never rests! That is the kind of person we want as President. My country needs someone who is not bottled in pettiness but someone who knows that the essence of leadership is changing positively the condition of the people you lead and not just changing it positively but changing it in the biggest possible ways. That is the President we require so Prof. Mills, the ball is in your court! Quit being happy with doing little and do more! Quit being petty and preoccupy yourself with matters of substance!