Why Is Adongo Hedging on the Mahama-Invented “Driver’s Mate” Analogy?

We need to get some things right here, especially regarding the role of the Vice-President of Fourth-Republican Ghana. The fact of the matter is that the Vice-President does not run governance policy; that is the constitutionally mandated job of the substantive President. Yes, the Vice-President may officially be designated as the Head of the Economic Management Team (EMT), but absolutely by no stretch of the imagination could the criterion for the selection of the Vice-President as Second-in-Command and Running-Mate of the substantive Presidential Candidate be said to be primarily and exclusively predicated on the economic or the fiscal credentials of the Vice-Presidential Candidate, else Mr. John “Gnassingbe” (Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying) Dramani Mahama would never have been selected as the Vice-Presidential Running-Mate of the then-Candidate John Evans Atta “Woyome” Mills, contrary to what Mr. Isaac Adongo, the Mahama henchman and former Deputy Finance Minister, would have the rest of us believe (See “Adongo tells Bawumia to stop the naivety and classical economic theories ” Modernghana.com 3/1/24).

The Ranking Member on the Parliamentary Finance Committee, who is also the National Democratic Congress-sponsored Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga-Central, in the Upper-East Region, knows more than most Ghanaians that it is the Sitting President who practically and effectively determines precisely which of his cabinet appointees and/or executive associates gets to run the economic and the fiscal policies of the government du jour. Under the Mills-Mahama government, for example, it was widely known that it was Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, the former Rawlings-appointed Governor of the Bank of Ghana and the Atta-Mills-appointed Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, who literally ran the economic and the fiscal policies of the Atta-Mills regime. And the Syracuse, New York, University alumnus far better qualified to run the economic policies of the Atta-Mills’ regime, than the largely titular Head of the so-called Economic Management Team, namely, Mr. John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama, the officially and the historically unrivaled Payola Solicitor with a Third-Class Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of Ghana and, some say, a two-year certification in Communications Propaganda from Moscow, Russia.

Which probably explains the apparent bad blood between Messrs. Duffuor and Mahama, which may very well have inflected or negatively impacted Yagbonwura Okogufuo Kwame Gonja’s decision not to include Dr. Duffuor in his cabinet in the wake of the “mysterious” passing of Prof. Atta-Mills, as Fourth-Republican Ghana’s first Sitting-President to have died in office was also affectionately known and called. Under the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur regime, even as Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, widow of the late former Vice-President, boldly and bitterly testified at her late husband’s funeral, the Head of the Economic Management Team may very well have been Mr. Seth Terkper, the Somanya native, from Nana Akufo-Addo’s electoral and political stronghold of the Eastern Region, and not the Cape Coast-born former Governor of the Bank of Ghana, who clearly appears to have been a token replacement for the “mysteriously vanished” President John Evans Atta-Mills, and had allegedly been effectively sidelined by the Mahama-led SADA government.

In other words, when Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia draws his brilliant analogy between a Driver’s Mate and his functional role in the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party, the Walewale native, from the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, is simply “telling it like it is,” as Black Muslim Minister Malcolm X, the legendary and immortalized African American Human and Civil Rights Activist would equally firmly and truthfully have put it. In short, absolutely in no way does the presumptive next President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana malign or traduce his immediate boss. Vice-President Bawumia simply authenticates what Mr. Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko, the Akufo-Addo cousin and the putatively unofficial Minister without Portfolio in the Akufo-Addo Administration, has been pontifically telling Ghanaians over the past 7 years.

Which is that it is unquestionably Cousin Kenneth Ofori-Atta, the recently “retired” and longest-serving Fourth-Republican Finance and Economic-Planning Minister, who runs economic and fiscal policies in the present Akufo-Addo Administration, and not the Head of the Economic Management Team and the presumptive next President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia. It is therefore not clear precisely what “hardship” Mr. Adongo would have Ghanaians believe has been so uniquely and exclusively brought upon them that did not already exist before the present Akufo-Addo Administration took over the democratic reins of governance from the previous Mahama regime, from the nation-wrecking blight of Dumsor to the effective bankrupting and the complete collapsing of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), under the previous Mahama regime.

If, indeed, any of our two major Presidential Candidates could be aptly accused of having a pathologically nauseating “Driver’s Mate Mindset,” it is definitely the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress and Mr. Adongo’s former boss and double-salary paymaster, and not the Oxbridge-educated fiscal policy Wizkid and Ghana’s foremost Digital Technology Pontiff, who has laudably and exemplarily leapfrogged our most beloved nation into the vanguard ranks of countries with access to the most advanced appropriation of cutting-edge Digital Technology and Culture. Then also, what “Mess” could a government that has put more than ONE-MILLION talented and able-bodied Ghanaian youths into Fee-Free Senior High Schools and Technical and Vocational Institutions for a better and more prosperous future, whom the previous Mahama regime of double-salary drawing cabinet and executive appointees had literally written off and cavalierly discharged onto the streets and the alleyways of our cities, towns and villages, on mendacious and the morally and politically reprehensible grounds that the Mahama government of “Impossibilities” – profound apologies to Near-Future President Mahamudu Bawumia – could not to mind? Come on, Isaac “Frafra” Adongo or Adongo-Frafra, why can’t you and your hoodlum pack of National Democratic Congress’ Kleptocrats in Parliament and at your Adabraka party Headquarters get more serious with the Ghanaian people?!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
March 20, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]