Wednesday,
August 13, 2014
Folks, former President John
Agyekum Kufuor says that if he had
had his way, he would have decorated his wife Theresa with “State honours.” I won’t go any further but refer you to the
real stuff coming from him: “According to the ex-president, his
“veteran” wife has been helpful in maintaining a decent marital home for the
many years they have lived together…
“…We’ve
been married for 51 years, so she is a veteran, a real veteran and sometimes I
just say if I got the opportunity again I would decorate her with some State
honours,” Kufuor said when a former Nigerian leader General Abdul Salami
Abubakar paid a courtesy call on him at his Airport residence. “She is
my landlady. Now I think there is some understanding, she says I should behave
and she would allow me to be”. (See:
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=320965).
I am tempted to throw the
searchlight on Kufuor within this context because “he has brought himself” (as
our Ghanaian soldiers will say). When he was in power, we heard rumours about his
incontinence in matters concerning the “sweetness of the flesh” (outside what
Theresa could offer him) but didn’t get that much hooked on them because of our
feeling that it is the usual Ghanaian thing, where polygamy opens many doors to
conjugal infidelity. Power corrupts in every way possible; and absolute power will
definitely corrupt absolutely the powers between the men’s thighs too. Hurray
to those with such powers!!
There is a backdrop. Yesterday, I
read a news report about Kufuor and the former Nigerian military ruler
(Abubakar Abdul Salaam) meeting and reminiscing over their hey days as the
founts of power and honour in their respective countries and sharing
experiences on how they felt many years after leaving office. The news report said
that, they concentrated on personal experiences, focusing on family affairs,
especially how many children and grandchildren they had and how life was
treating such products of their procreative endeavours. Good for them that they
could have powers between their thighs to regenerate life in diverse ways. Virile
men of integrity?
But it seems that Kufuor is taking
issues too far; he seems to be craving some attention so he can either come to
terms with reality or recall wasted efforts and gnash his teeth over. Why isolate
his wife alone for honouring? Are other wives of people in authority that much
loyal and worthy of recognition and appreciation to be so elevated for national
honours? Why should Kufuor be so fixated on only his wife? An attempt to hide
something? Or to create the impression that he defers to his wife and can’t be
separated from her, even when in many of his nearly 200 foreign trips he didn’t
take his wife along, unlike most heads of state (including the Rawlings that
the NPP people regard as their worst nemesis who would always go out with Nana
Konadu, his wife)? What is Kufuor desperately trying to cover up?
In all honesty, Kufuor deserves
recognition for being what and who he is. I admire him for one thing—knowing
how to adapt himself to the terrain to play it safe. In all that he did to
succeed in overturning the table against the hegemonistic Rawlings system and
to retain political power thereafter, he deserves much commendation. As to what
he did in office, history should be the best judge. Those of us not well
disposed toward praising him anyhow may have our reservations; but he is still
standing tall, even as he counts his days in his 80-something years on this
wretched earth. He has a life to live.
In office, he lived that life in
diverse ways, seeking opportunities to prove his worth and ending up
self-aggrandizing. Take his over 200 foreign trips, for instance, and you
should know him as a gallivanting person. Not only that. He made sure that he
prepared a safe passage for himself as he neared the end of his tenure.
The Chinery-Hesse Commission that
he appointed to carve out a post-office niche for him did its best to weave an
Arabian Nights Carpet for him, but sadly, he couldn’t fly. The ex-gratia was
alarming and Ghanaians kicked against it, especially when the Mills-led
administration torpedoed it.
But Kufuor had a streak that
nothing could diminish. He caused to be spent millions of dollars for the
production of medals that he awarded himself and others that he had isolated as
the cream of Ghanaians whose accomplishments needed to be written in stone (or
gold?). In choosing the beneficiaries, he slighted Akufo Addo (someone who had
emerged to lead the NPP at Election 2008) and privileged the opposition NDC’s
Atta Mills. A sacrilege? Go and ask Kufuor himself.
Persistent pressure made him
reverse his decision to bring in Akufo-Addo; and on the coronation day, Kufuor
sat in state and enjoyed all that happened. Ghanaians bore the cost and cursed
him for playing the al-Houdini trick on them.
Folks, can you imagine that many
years thereafter, Kufuor will be out to say that he should have included his
wife (Theresa) on the list of beneficiaries of his largesse? Believe it or not,
the truth is that Kufuor now thinks that his wife deserves a national honour,
not for serving Ghana to improve governance or living conditions of the people,
but for being a “loyal wife
Who will easily put behind
him/her the scandalous developments about one Iraqi woman (Gizelle Yajzi), who
was in the news as being engaged by Kufuor as an economist or adviser and
placed at the seat of government to advise Kufuor on how to solve Ghana’s
economic malaise but ended up being his bed-fellow? We have been told that
their liaison yielded twins that bore Kufu0or’s name and that of his younger brother
(Addo Kufuor). In all that happened, Mrs. Theresa Kufuor was reported to have
kept her cool, unlike others (especially Victoria Kibaki, wife of the former
Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki) who would have turned the whole world upside
down in the circumstance?
So, long after leaving office—and
many years after sidelining his wife in the award of medals of “meritorious
achievements”—why is Kufuor coming out now to make this utterance? And he wants
to waste public funds to honour his wife for being “a loyal wife” to him? Oh,
Ghana!!
Is this man really what he is to be
admired? Of course, I am none of his admirers and will not pander to him. I see
him as he is and will comment on him as such. He can choose to honour his wife
as such. After all, if he can establish a Foundation to promote his interests,
what prevents him from honouring his wife to immortalize her as the one who has
made him what he thinks he is? His problem is that he won’t want to do so from
his own resources. He would wish to use resources of the state to do so.
Unfortunately, the days of
dipping hands into the national coffers are long over. Do you recall how he
stole 41 million Cedis in January 2001 for the rehabilitation of his own private
residence in the Airport Residential Area of Accra? He hasn’t yet found it
expedient to abandon the “Kwaku Ananse” tricks that have continued to prop him
up; but unfortunately for him, there is no more “open Sesame” to fall back on. The
Ali Baba days are over, even if some have learnt to follow in his footsteps.
With such characters, efforts at building Ghana in our time will continue to be
difficult to make.
I shall return.
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