Thursday,
May 17, 2012
As if he has just woken up to the
reality that bad leaders are elected by poor citizens who do not
vote, the NPP’s Akufo-Addo is on a campaign of sorts, dubbed as “Restoring
Hope,” to move the electorate to vote for him in the December elections.
But
he seems to be digging his own grave more than uplifting himself to the vantage
point. I will be brazen to say that he is not restoring any hope but rather
dampening it.
He
has so far not said anything new to restore anybody’s hope that he has what it
takes to outdo the incumbent or previous governments whose visionlessness hasn’t
taken us out of the woods yet. All that has come from him is either
promise-making or a scathing attack on President Mills and his government.
He
has given little for us to know what a future government led by him will do
that we haven’t seen other governments already do in Ghana. Or to warrant his
being given the mandate to rule. Bombastic speeches and self-aggrandizing
posturing won’t help us develop our country.
Akufo-Addo
is limping politically and all others in his campaign team are limping too. Just
as it is in the animal world, when the leading animal is lame, the herd fails
to get to the pasture.
Considering the rumpus that
occasioned his earlier promise to make education free at the secondary level,
one would expect Akufo-Addo to be guarded in his politicking; but he hasn’t.
Instead, he has moved into a higher gear, doing nothing but making promises
here and there.
His latest promise is that he will introduce a “Zongo Development Fund”
to address the development gap in impoverished communities should he be voted
into power. According to him the special fund will be an annual
budgetary allocation that will aim at deprived communities, mostly referred to
as Zongos.
My
immediate reaction to this sweeping but senseless promise is to wish that Akufo-Addo
were near me so I could pull his ears very hard!! It seems he needs something
of the sort to re-align him to reality.
Will
this man ever learn any lesson to know that promises of this sort cause more
harm to political fortunes than any good that might be imagined therefrom? Or
that they are also demeaning and are better not made?
I am highly surprised that
Akufo-Addo will make such a promise and be defended by Mustapha Hamid that “the fund has become very necessary
because over the years a general developmental fund has not solved the
infrastructural deficit that exists in those communities.”
But
what should I expect from such desperate people?
This
promise is as hollow as it confirms the desperation with which these NPP functionaries
are approaching Election 2012. It is a clear case of crass opportunism. And we know that a smart opportunist can be an intellectual moron.
Akufo-Addo’s
recourse to such pathetic appeals to win electoral favour brings to mind the
futility of this promise-making galore as an electoral bait. Were it for
promises alone, there would be no need for Election 2012 to be contested at all
between the incumbent and these opponents. It stands to reason that President
Mills and the NDC campaigners for Election 2008 had made numerous promises
which have turned out to be the cause of their woes and sleeplessness because
of how difficult fulfilling those promises has been.
But
for this promise-making spree, what else would Akufo-Addo have used to reach
out to the electorate?
Sometimes, I wonder what these
Ghanaian politicians take the electorate for. As dummies or people whose
thought process is so impaired that they can be turned into puppets to be
bobbed up and down for political advantage?
By
playing to the gallery and making this kind of promise, Akufo-Addo comes across
as a dangerous character who will sacrifice everything to achieve his political
ambition. Indeed, this latest promise betrays his shallowness and strongly detracts
from whatever he is worth. It is an insult to the residents of the Zongo
communities and must be condemned, not commended.
The
Zongos have their unique history and characteristics. They evoke pride among
their dwellers and give them the distinct identity that they uphold with vigour
and determination. To write them off as impoverished people who cannot live
their lives without handouts from an Akufo-Addo government is insulting.
It
is not as if the Zongo communities sprang up to be inhabited by the dregs of
the society or to be regarded as synonymous to extreme poverty, want, disease,
and abject squalor. Those who know the history behind these Zongo communities
will hesitate to think the way Akufo-Addo does, which is the rationale behind
his promise.
The
Zongos are cultural symbols that construct the identities of their inhabitants,
not as the poorest of the poor who cannot live their lives without any handout
from the Father Christmas that Akufo-Addo wants to turn himself into.
They
emerged to accommodate the needs of citizens from mostly Northern Ghana,
Nigeria, and other countries in the West African sub-region who settled in southern
Ghana and were initially considered as “strangers.” Of course, they didn’t
settle directly among—or intermix with—the local residents (apparently to have
a separate identity and live their lives as their cultural preferences would
allow them to) and to enable them to preserve their distinct socio-cultural
selves. There was no melting pot activity.
Anybody
who knows this history will be quick to conclude that the differences between those
settlers and the indigenes far outweighed any similarity that might encourage their
commingling. Religious faiths and preferences also influenced the need for separate
existence—those in the Zongo community being mostly Muslims who were content
with their conditions of existence and have even been proud enough to see that “Zongoness”
as a mark of pride—of belonging to roots that can be traced.
And
they have been at peace with others in the particular locality without even
seeing themselves as disadvantaged or discriminated against. Akufo-Addo’s
promise has a huge potential for discrimination.
Anything
that characterizes the Zongo community has more to do with culture and politics
than economy. It is an open secret that residents of the Zongo communities are
as rich as their counterparts living outside the Zongos. Go round these Zongos
in Ghana and you should see things for yourself.
If
anybody gets up today to equate life in the Zongo community with poverty, that
person must be feared. It is only a mischievous person who will do so,
especially if it is for political capital as it is in Akufo-Addo’s case.
Lifestyle
and the sense of identity and belonging are the main measuring rods, not
poverty. By making this promise, therefore, Akufo-Addo has only opened himself
to scorn—and he will have more of it than he can cope with.
Larger
level concerns remain. Is Akufo-Addo saying that he will isolate the Zongos in
all the cities, towns, towns and villages in Ghana for this special development
into “inner-city paradises” while leaving the other parts of those cities,
towns, and villages undeveloped? Or how is the Zongo to be carved out of the
entire lot to be so developed without provoking anything untoward?
Better
still, how will such a project be carried out? Pulling down all the existing structures
(rickety or not) in the Zongo and rebuilding them under a housing project (with
all the drainage, public utilities, etc.) in place while leaving other parts of
the locality untouched? How many of such projects can an Akufo-Addo government
undertake in 4 years to make it sustainable, anyway?
More
importantly, where will the money for such lofty projects come from? The
petroleum industry? Loans? What difference, then, will such a government make
from what we already have?
You
see, Akufo-Addo is simply not making a good mark in his campaign. He has
already hit a snag and will suffer for it.
At
a time when public anger against Kenney Agyapong’s unguarded utterance
(declaration of war against Ewes and Gas) has negatively affected the NPP’s
image, one expects something better from Akufo-Addo than this promise to the
Zongo communities.
He
has so far shrugged off commonsensical demands to renounce Agyapong’s threats
and his own war-mongering cry of “All die be die” as a prerequisite for
creating a congenial atmosphere for the electioneering campaign toward Election
2012.
Having
made a half-hearted attempt in his interaction with some chiefs in the Volta
Region, which hasn’t in any way solved his own credibility problem, he seems to
have no regard for the Gas (at least to be moved toward assuaging their doubts
and fears within the context of the Kennedy Agyapong nonsense). He is
unperturbed by public opinion and is adding more to worsen his footing.
Such
is the nature of this self-conceited braggart of a politician, carried away by
a run-away ambition to be Ghana’s President at all costs. I wonder what he will
say to the Fulani community too. Build kraals near the Osu Castle or the
Jubilee House and grow luscious fodder for them to graze their cattle on?
I
deride his so-called campaign of hope restoration as shallow and whimsical if
all it has to offer is empty promises. Until anything different emerges from him
to change my impression, I will continue to urge Ghanaians to disregard him and
his NPP team whose only badge of honour is cunning manipulation of the
citizenry and self-conceit. Hopes can never be restored through promises and
the flogging of a dead horse.
The
Zongo communities deserve better than this rabble-rousing and massaging of
emotions, which is nothing but a manipulation of a rather sensitive cultural
issue for selfish political gains. Fie on such filthy and insulting promises!
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