Is Obasanjo More Sensible Than Kufuor?

Campaigning for reelection in his home region of the North, recently, President John Dramani Mahama was reported to have told an audience in Ghana’s Akan-majority language of Twi that former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, the man whose government Mr. Mahama spent some 8 years as an opposition Member of Parliament pooh-poohing for purported non-performance, was a sensible man, after all, because Mr. Kufuor had publicly complained in the waning days of his second term in office that the constitutionally mandated presidential tenure of 4 years was woefully inadequate for any Ghanaian leader to make a remarkable impact on the country’s development (See “Former President Kufuor Is a Sensible Person – Mahama” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/23/16).

This is quite an interesting confession because as a much-touted historian, Mr. Mahama ought to have known that the issue of the supposedly inadequate 4-year presidential tenure was actually first raised by retired Nigerian strongman and former president, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, and not the man whom Mr. Mahama conveniently and opportunistically attributes such plaint to. As I vividly recall, President Obasanjo’s previous bitter complaint was merely being echoed by President Kufuor at a luncheon or dinner, I forget which, that the latter’s Nigerian counterpart held in his honor. It was in the twilight of the stewardship of both West African leaders over their respective countries. I remember the occasion vividly because I had been provoked to pen and publish a column arguing that Mr. Kufuor had not been blindsided by the 4-year Fourth Republican presidential term of office. I also pointed out that what made President Kufuor’s complaint annoying was the fact that he had been a member of the Constituent Assembly that deliberated on the terms of the country’s return to constitutional democracy.

I would shortly discover to my chagrin that many, perhaps most, of the leaders of the extant political opposition had boycotted the drafting and crafting of the country’s Fourth-Republican Constitution. Which largely explains the fact that many an expert in constitutional law has had occasion to disdainfully describe Ghana’s current constitution as the most inartistic and poorly conceived of all our postcolonial constitutions. I also highlighted the fact that coming from President Obasanjo, the complaint that the 4-year presidential tenure was woefully inadequate was perfectly understandable, if also because nobody expected a dyed-in-the-wool military dictator to fully appreciate the rhythmic beauty of constitutional democracy.

On the other hand, coming from President Kufuor, such plaint was very curious because it painfully reflected the fact that the New Patriotic Party’s leader had learned a diddly little from his years in opposition politics, under the ham-fisted and criminally protracted Rawlings dictatorship. Much the same observation could be aptly made of Mr. Mahama, who has been increasingly assuming the irritable and cynical posture of a spoil brat by adamantly and distastefully insisting, against all reason and common sense, that the two-term limit on the presidency is a matter of course, rather than the second presidential term being clearly envisaged to be squarely predicated on the quality and competence of a presidential incumbent’s first four years in office.

As I vividly recall, Mr. Mahama has been holding on to this grossly misguided and pathologically self-serving interpretation of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution since 2008, when he was the running-mate of then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, late. Back then, the former Gonja-West National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament had likened Ghana to a horse and himself a rider who had been abruptly and callously bumped off-saddle into an arid, sandy desert blast. He had vowed then that once the NDC managed to get itself back into power, the party’s movers and shakers intended to stay put till kingdom come. This is pretty much the strategic narrative behind vigorous attempts by the NDC’s apparatchiks to ensure that the civilized and commonsensical phraseology of “fair and square” remains a decidedly alien vocabulary to Ghanaian politics for the foreseeable future.

Mr. Mahama, who, by the way, flatly turned down a state honor conferred on him by the now conveniently “sensible” President Kufuor in 2008, sophistically claims that “in view of the global race for development, a Ghanaian president needs time to implement his programs and also plan the economy.” Such observation could, indeed, be deemed progressive and even refreshing if Mr. Mahama could frankly and sincerely point to a single development project that he and his cabinet appointees have successfully executed in the nearly 4 years that they have wielded the reins of governance, and nearly 8 years if one adds the years that he served as Vice-President of Ghana.

Would Mr. Mahama, therefore, agree with those who have called him a political dunce, or dullard, because it has taken him nearly 8 years to come to the realistic conclusion that the presidency, as it presently stands, after all, was not tailored for extremely slow administrative misfits like himself?

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