There is absolutely nothing more risible than when the proverbial pot calls the kettle black. This was the image that readily came to mind, when I read the very brief news item that reported on the Facebook post of former President John Dramani Mahama in which the latter reportedly called on his successor, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to promptly investigate and prosecute the many allegations that have been made against many of his executive and ministerial appointees (See “Prosecute the Numerous Corruption Allegations Against Your Appointees – Mahama to Nana Addo” Modernghana.com 1/1/19).

Now, this is rather farcical because even the most authoritative member of Mr. Mahama’s own party, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, who is also widely acclaimed as the founding-father of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), is on record to have called the Mahama government the most thoroughgoing corrupt of its kind in Ghana’s postcolonial history. Mr. Rawlings has also gone on record as having said that he regretted having ordered the summary execution by firing squad of the eight former military rulers, six of whom he personally overthrew in his June 4, 1979 uprising or mutiny staged by his so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta. According to Mr. Rawlings, the likes of Generals IK Acheampong, FWK Akuffo and Commander Utuka were at least 90-percent far less corrupt than Mr. Mahama and his former executive associates and cronies.

It is also significant to observe the fact that the handful of members of the judiciary who were prosecuted and sanctioned under his tenure were ferreted out of the proverbial woodwork by such taxpayer-funded private investigators as Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his private team of investigators called Tiger-Eye PI, and not by any of our national security agencies. The other case involving the SADA (Savannah Accelerated Development Authority) on embezzlement charges was investigated by an award-winning private media reporter. What about his own brother, Ibrahim, the tax-dodging crooked entrepreneur? You see, the scofflaw President Mahama preferred to frame up and convict members of the nation’s judiciary so that he and his cabinet and other executive appointees could get away with their bribery and corruption scam-artistry. At any rate, in the case of the SADA scandal, full prosecution and sentencing of the two criminal suspects was brought to its logical conclusion by operatives of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), to the great display of some key NDC operatives.

Mr. Mahama is also widely known to have removed the crackerjack criminal investigator initially assigned by then-Inspector General of the Ghana Police Service, Mr. John Kudalor, to get to the bottom of the still unsolved mystery surrounding the cold-calculated brutal assassination of Mr. JB Danquah-Adu, an Akufo-Addo cousin and then New Patriotic Party MP for Akyem-Abuakwa-North. Equally significant, the then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama, who shamelessly and heartlessly celebrated the suspicious death of his predecessor and former boss, President John Evans Atta-Mills, and even callously attributed the same to the wise and auspicious decision of Divine Providence, has yet to officially inform the general Ghanaian public and the nation precisely how the man in whose government he served as the second-in-command, or Vice-President, met his death. And, by the way, Mr. Mahama also never investigated Mr. Stanislav X. Dogbe, his own Communication Director at the Presidency, in the case involving the brutal mauling of the young broadcast news reporter from the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). To be certain, Mr. Mahama was widely reported to have actually promoted Mr. Dogbe for such act of savagery. Mr. Bagbin, the longest-serving NDC parliamentary would inform the nation, shortly thereafter, that it is, in fact, Mr. Dogbe who had effectively ruled the nation instead of the man who held the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces.

You see, what Mr. Mahama ought to be calling for presently is the prompt and swift prosecution of those of his double-salary drawing cabinet appointees. But, of course, we all know that this impudent hypocrite woefully lacks the requisite courage of his conviction, being that he had also personally supervised such flagrant act of patent criminality. I couldn’t also stand hearing the former Rawlings’ Communication Minister hypocritically presuming to lecture his successor on the imperative need for President Akufo-Addo to pay homage to some bizarre phenomenon called “the spirit” of the erstwhile Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). The former Gonja-West’s National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament conveniently fails to underscore the inescapable fact that what he mischievously dubs as “the spirit” of the December 31 Revolution, is actually about Mr. Rawlings’ $ 5 Million (USD) payola that he shamelessly solicited from strongman Sani Abacha, late, the former Nigerian military dictator, in exchange for doing public relations propaganda for the then widely unpopular army general.

There is also a cruel irony in the fact that strictly speaking, there is absolutely no fundamental difference between Messrs. Rawlings and Mahama. The two men are thoroughgoing corrupt “revolutionary” birds of the same feathers. I suppose that is what he means when the Moscow-trained media and public relations expert, so-called, alludes to the corruption-fighting spirit of the December 31 Revolution.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 2, 2019

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net