……Bring It On Akufo-Addo

By Margaret Jackson

July 3, 2012

You know what? Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, NPPs Presidential Candidate has been struggling for the past two years to determine who he really is, what he stands for and which record to run on for the up-coming December 7 elections, because he has no record of his own. Normally, people run on their own record or are forced to run on the record of others when they fall short on their accomplishments.

That is why you have seen Akufo-Addo and Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia, his attack dog and number two, ceaselessly attacking the ruling NDC and portraying the Mills’ government as not having done just a single thing worthy of mention since the NDC assumed power in 2009.

Having failed in running the Mills’ government off the road due to the way the NDC is now talking more and more about its record of achievements which Akufo-Addo himself has seen littered across board during his failed “Hopeless” campaign tours in the country, Akufo-Addo is left with little choice than making a political dash to cloth himself with the terrible so-called achievements of Kufuor’s government which I think is the worst in Ghana’s history. I will explain why.

Many people have come to the conclusion that Mute Akufo-Addo who does not want to talk about his own so-called achievements and failures in life, is better off keeping quiet than to open his mouth wide. Reason being that anytime he talks, nothing sensible follows his hollow logic or arguments or facts. Akufo-Addo makes things worse for himself anytime he decides to talk big, but the guy never seems to learn.

Otherwise, how on earth or how do you connect the dots when Akufo-Addo who very well knows the severe lapses in Kufuor’s government, which prompted him to threaten ex-president Kufuor a month before the 2008 elections that if he should win that elections he was going to probe him, now turn around and crown Kufuor as the best thing that has ever happened to Ghana. Akufo-Addo during his strong feuding with Kufuor is on record to have told Kufuor in the face that he will not let him be if he becomes the president of the land. So what has changed since?

When a man is desperately hanging on a thin rope for survival, anything, just anything to help him live to tell the tale matters a lot, this is why Akufo-Addo has finally come out to put his seal of approval on the one-dimensional and most corrupt record of ex-president Kufuor. With less than six months to go, Akufo-Addo has painfully realized that time is running out for him, hence his decision to run into the armpit of Kufuor because he has no achievements of his own to run on.

Akufo-Addo, made that terrible assertion of crowning Kufuor’s government as the best government Ghana has ever had during the campaign launch of Sara Adjoa Safo, NPPs Parliamentary Candidate for Dome/Kwabenya in the Greater Accra Region. And to ‘sweeten’ the political pot, Akufo-Addo further stated that the NPP created jobs for the youth of the country. Well said!

Ghanaians have not forgotten or at best they are no fools when Kufuor who claims to be the best president of our time sold Ghana Telecom to Vodafone for peanuts. What was the reason Kufuor gave during the hasty sale of Ghana Telecom? The country’s economy was in intensive care unit or hanging on a thin thread, therefore, according to Kufuor if the sale of Ghana Telecom to Vodafone had not happened at that material day and time, civil servants throughout the country were going to lose their salaries. I am not making it up. It is Kufuor’s own words.

If Kufuor did extraordinarily well for the country, why is it that the whole country’s lifeline was pegged on the sale of Ghana Telecom to Vodafone? Or why is it that if that singular sale had not happened, the whole country was going to tumble? And Akufo-Addo has the nerve to say that such a government is the best in the country’s history?

When the issue of land grabbing by Kufuor and his cronies came up, Gabby Otchere Darko and others immediately came forward to state that Akufo-Addo was offered some of the parcels of land but he declined. If that statement is true one would ask why Akufo-Addo declined the offer. It is because it was wrong for government officials to steal and share state lands. Therefore, if Akufo-Addo saw that it was wrong for Kufuor to steal and share state lands, why crown him as the best?

We were all in this country when two individuals, Dr, Wereko-Brobbey and Kwadwo Mpiani played chess game with millions of dollars of the country’s hard earned money during the Ghana @ 50 celebrations, which as I write still have some items fully paid for by the Kufuor’s government but have not yet been delivered. The fact that the NPP packed court discharged Wereko-Brobbey and Mpiani on technicalities does not mean the two corrupt individuals did not squander millions of dollars of our money. And Akufo-Addo is today approving such naked rape and incompetence as the best to happen to Ghana? For the information of Akufo-Addo, Kufuor’s government has still not been able to account for over 20 million dollars expended on the celebrations.

All national airlines throughout the world are struggling which is why governments with national airlines do chip in their support. It did not start today. That is why Swissair at a point in time went bankrupt and had to be rescued by the Swiss government. Therefore, if Ghana Airways was struggling and you claim to be the party with the magic wand to turn the country’s fortunes around, you inject sane economic policies to turn the fortunes of the corporation around. You do not liquidate the national airline! And worse still you do not form a mediocre national airline in its place which folds up before you even leave office. That was what happened during Kufuor’s regime and today we have Akufo-Addo blindly applauding.

Ghanaians have not forgotten how Kufuor’s daughter suddenly came by such huge sums of dollars and was suddenly catapulted as the lead person for the Accra Mall. Again, we have not forgotten how his son Chief Kufuor bought the African Regency Hotel under mysterious circumstances and was also given a huge contract to supply meters to the Electricity Company.

Kufuor, who got away with his misdeeds and today thinks he is wiser than Ghanaians sent his then Minster of Health, Dr. Richard Anane to an AIDS conference in the United States. But Anane, who went to the AIDS conference with a different mission had an encounter with one of the conferees when the conference was in session and the result is the baby which state resources were used to cater for him. Since Kufuor is equally guilty in such acts he stood by Anane and the end of the story is what we all know. And we have Akufo-Addo, another known player in this game cheering Kufuor on as the best.

The NPP folks always do not waste time to seize on anything that would help them score cheap political points. But when issues which they are guilty of are brought to their notices, they resort to insults. Can any of the NPP folks ask Akufo-Addo whether he approves of Kufuor’s waste of 1.4 million dollars of the country’s monies to organize an award ceremony whereby every single person who has ever glorified Kufuor was given an award?

When Ghanaians saw how corruption was so endemic in Kufuor’s regime and people started talking about it, what did Kufuor say. He poked his fingers into the eyes of Ghanaians and stated bluntly that corruption started during the time of Adam, therefore, what they saw under his regime was no big deal.

It was one beautiful day in 2005 when for the first time in the history of the country, a sitting NPP parliamentarian in the person of Amoateng was arrested in far away United States for peddling in narcotics. And the memory of the 77 parcels of cocaine which got missing under the watchful eyes of Kufuor is still fresh to Ghanaians. To date the 77 parcels of cocaine were never found and the lead person, Georgina Wood, who was tasked by Kufuor to conduct the shoddy investigations which yielded nothing was later rewarded by being appointed the Chief Justice of the land. This is the achievement of Kufuor which Akufo-Addo is bringing it on to the campaign trail.

I have loads of Kufuor’s stinking achievements which I would want to highlight, but I will leave it for another sunny day. Akufo-Addo may have bitten more than he can chew this time round, and we will bring it on to him. Kufuor did a couple of good things, but his crimes far supersede his accomplishments. Kufour would have been in jail if he had ruled another country other than Ghana. He knows that! And the NPP folks do too. If he has been allowed to enjoy his loot, Kufuor and Akufo-Addo should not waste anybody’s ears since the bruises Kufuor left on the country’s economy is still fresh in our memory.

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