LAST HURDLE TO MAKING OR UNMAKING NANA AKUFO-ADDO’S LONG GAME TO BREAK THE EIGHT
THE LAST HURDLE TO MAKING OR UNMAKING NANA AKUFO-ADDO’S LONG GAME TO BREAK THE EIGHT.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
4 November 2023 determines whether Nana Akufo-Addo’s dream birthed upon losing the 2008 Presidential Elections never to allow any other person except his preferred candidate in the New Patriotic Party to succeed him should he assume the Presidency of Ghana will be actualized. The outcome for the 4 November 2023 NPP congress and presidential primaries is certain – Nana Akufo-Addo’s anointed candidate, Mahamudu Bawumia, will be nominated for the 2024 Presidential Elections as programmed.
Nana Akufo-Addo has been rehearsing with his family and friends his paranoid dream on assuming the office of the President of Ghana on 7 January 2017 to demonstrate that it is possible to skew Ghana’s Constitutional and democratic system with the empty shell appearance of a free election without the concomitant substance of fairness and transparency underpinning true constitutionalism, democracy, and the rule of law.
The beneficiaries of his abuse of public office to ingratiate and corrupt all forms of resistance to his long game is testified to in secret by some of the recipients of the showers of booties and sinecures of appointments from this Government since its assumption of office from 2017 and going forward to the 2024 elections. The old and tested system of divide and rule has been perfected with both carrots of potential and actual benefits and sticks of intimidation and deprivation of personal liberty including life as instruments of governance and interfering with free and fair elections.
The stage was set to conduct a pilot study using the NPP’s super delegates’ conference to test the machinery for the actualization of the long game for breaking the 8 by hook or crook. The 26 August 2023 NPP primaries, (supper delegates’ conference), to prune down the 10 candidates who did not believe in my intelligence and security analysis that Mahamudu Bawumia is the only candidate Nana Akufo-Addo’s Family and Friends’ Government will unequivocally support to represent the party at the 2024 Presidential elections came to pass with my vindication that the internal primaries was only intended to coronate the chosen and establishment candidate amongst the contestants.
Alan Kyeremanten and Boakye Agyarko have already told the unbeliever of Nana Akufo-Addo and his Family and Friends’ Government agenda of their experiences of how the long game was actualized at the 26 August 2023 NPP super delegates’ conference to need further narration by me. The other seven contestants of the 26 August 2023 contest have also expressed their disappointing experiences. The remaining three contestant against Nana Akufo-Addo’s chosen one on 4 November 2024 have since been touring the country and sharing their fears for the direct Government and NPP interference with the level playing field for a free and fair election for that day.
The lamentations of unfairness by the three (3) remaining contestants against the Nana Akufo-Addo chosen heir to contest the 2024 Presidential elections, his Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, have persisted since the 26 August 2023 super delegates’ conference. On Monday 23 October 2023 Francis Addai Nimoh bewailed what he says is intimidation and coercion of delegates ahead of the 4 November 2023 Presidential primaries when he stated in an interview on the Ghana Kasa program reported on Ghana Web, inter alia, that:
“…. We want to break the eight-year governance cycle under the Fourth Republic and by so doing make history. So, we can’t use the same old way to achieve what we’ve set before us. We have to adopt a new way of doing things to make the party attractive once again. There should be respect and love among party members. If we intimidate, coerce and utter divisive comments the party will not have unity and will suffer in 2024.”
On the same day, Wednesday 25 October 2023, Dr. Afriyie Akoto expressed his worries that engineering favours for only one candidate at the 4 November 2023 NPP Congress to elect its presidential candidate could have detrimental consequences. Dr. Akoto stated in his interview on Joy News and report in Ghana Web, inter alia, that:
“But we have rules and regulations which say that if you are a party official you don’t come out to say that you are supporting this person or that person but look at what is happening. The whole government, the whole parliament, the whole party, most of the party managers, and so on have come out openly to say that they support one person and it goes against the rules. So, there is something wrong with the party."
The President of Ghana under whose watch the internal NPP’s presidential primaries are being held by his party on 4 November 2023 ignored the concerns of the three (3) contesting candidates against anointing his Vice President as his successor when on the occasion of a visit on 26 October 2023 to the Jubilee House by pupils and teachers of the Association International School, the President signaled and instructed the NPP delegates as to who to vote for as his preferred candidate at the impending Congress and primaries. Citinewsroom reported on 27 October 2023, online that:
“Nana Akufo-Addo on why he picked Bawumia as his running mate - President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has shed light on the reasons behind his choice of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as his running mate, a decision that has played a pivotal role in the country’s political landscape.”
The President was reported to have made insinuations to regional balance with the main objective of drawing attention to the 4 November 2023 primaries and to the fact that the three remaining candidates were all from Southern Ghana with Mahamudu Bawumia, his Vice President, being the only candidate from Northern Ghana when he said:
“In terms of the balance, people from the south, people from the north…I think that for the unity of the country, it is good that we have a leadership where Northerners and Southerners are together so that the country can remain united…. He [Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia] is an honest person. He speaks honestly to you. He is not one of those people who you have to guess what they are trying to say, he says what he has to say directly.”
President Nana Akufo-Addo used similar preferential language to favour Mahamudu Bawumia before the 26 August 2023 pruning down conference, and he is at his paranoid long game again without scruples.
I was not surprised when Edward Ennim on 27 October 2023, repeated on Okay FM the charges of abuse of the financial resources at the presidency in manipulating both the 26 August 2023 NPP primaries and the final one slated for 4 November 2023. Mr. Ennim was reported on Ghana Web of 28 October 2023 to have “…. highlighted the potential financial implications of these alleged actions, stating that the substantial sums withdrawn from government coffers for this purpose could push the country toward bankruptcy.”
Mr.. Ennim is quoted in the report as having said that:
"Three days ago, someone called me, a whole Chief Executive Officer who was an NDC member previously, was given money to distribute to the delegates in the North - Tamale and Bolga. I was like I wish people would go and confront him to rob him. They are using CEOs, board chairmen and certain ministers to distribute money. In the November 4 election that is what they are doing so if you have a genuine candidate, will you be using money? I am saying that by the time they will finish this election, NPP, already the bankrupt state we are in, will be two times worse, so whoever becomes president, if you don't go after such people for the money, you can never succeed because where would you get the money to work? While Ghana is broke, individuals have the cash, so if you come to power and you don't chase them for the money, then less than one year of your stay in power will result in an uprising."
Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, who many Ghanaians and the rank and file of the NPP consider to be the leading candidate against the Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Nana Akufo-Addo’s handpicked candidate to succeed him at the 4 November 2023 congress, on 30 October 2023 confirmed his apprehensions for a rigged election when he was reported on mynewsgh.com to have warned that:
“I am sending a nice caution to both the police personnel and the Electoral Commissions that they should not be pushed by any government officials or any Regional Chairman because if they push, I will also push. If there will be no fairness and transparency during the presidential primaries, I can’t promise them but I will continue to give them showdown since NPP needs fairness to unite the party.”
As though his warning was not enough, Kennedy Agyapong threw a bomb shell about attempts to bribe him from contesting the primaries when he was reported to have said that:
"The money they offered is $800 million if he doesn’t know. He should ask Mr Oppong Bio, if that is what they are saying but I said no I will not step down, Ghana first. In 2016, you people were not able to buy pickups. How come today you are able to offer me $800 million? So I said I won’t step down….” .
This allegation has been denied by spokespersons for Mahamudu Bawumia in spite of the witness to the events named by Kennedy Agyapong. The track record of this President and Government in mothering the canker of corruption makes it impossible to disbelieve Mr. Agyapong’s allegation without a Government Commission of Enquiry to investigate the Kennedy Agyapong bribery allegations.
An analysis of the open source security and intelligence materials on elections since the 2020 elections support the questions raised about the Electoral Commission’s impartiality as a results of appointments based on the letter of the 1992 Constitution without animations from its spirit, and the suppression of the opposing views of all other political parties who disagreed with the appointments. The security and intelligence system has been stacked with carefully selected leaders and operatives with proven political party affiliations. The legislature has been the subject of manipulation with the use of blackmail and ingratiation. The public indices of trust point to perceptions of a high level of a compromised third arm of Government which has not been helped with past and recent appointments to it, and the delays and timing of its output in urgent matters for constitutional adjudication.
Nature’s justice has been the only obstacle reminding Nana Akufo-Addo and his family and friends’ that in all things, man may propose, but nature also disposes. In spite of the razor thin victory at the 2020 Presidential elections resulting from manipulations of the electoral and constitutional system, Nana Akufo-Addo has learnt no lessons that man succeeds only when the variable of nature allows him.
Kennedy Ohene Agyapong may be a grass roots preference of the NPP, but Nana Akufo-Addo cannot trust him sufficiently to hand over power to him in the agenda to break the 8. Mahamudu Bawumia is a safe pair of hands to give Nana Akufo-Addo the third term in office he seeks using a surrogate. Whether Nana Akufo-Addo will succeed in actualizing his long game with Mahamudu Bawumia at the 2024 elections will unfold after his nomination on 4 November 2023. Nature’s justice will ultimately determine the final verdict.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
31 October 2023