“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Often Rhymes”: Mark Twain 

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is so scared of a free and fair democratic contest based on the electorate exercising free will in determining the country’s sixth President under the 1992 Constitution that he reserved most of the infrastructural developments undertaken under his tenure to be commissioned by his chosen successor and himself within the last three months to the 7 December 2024 elections. This flagrant and arrogant manifestation of the abuse of incumbency for election interference constitutes a condescending insult to the electorate for lacking the capacity to remember the economic, social, and political suffering they have gone through during the past seven years and nine months of the Nana Akufo/Bawumia family, friends, and cronies looting government. 

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his anointed successor, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia underestimate the intelligence of the ordinary Ghanaian electorate with their political electioneering campaigns for the 7 December 2024 elections in the name of commissioning completed, semi-completed, and work-in-progress, projects nationwide. The electorate, however, needs no reminder that the timed election season commissioning of projects is just a smokescreen to syphon the public funds at the electorate and taxpayers’ expense to instal Nana Akufo-Addo’s clone to succeed him to assuage their fears that the massive looting of the state coffers during their tenure will be exposed when one of the eleven candidates contesting the 2024 elections wins the contest on 7 December 2024. 

 The Ghanaian electorate who are old enough to have lived through the life of the Fourth Republic know that such waste of scarce public funds at times of economic hardships and massive government corruption which insults their intelligence have in the past resulted in the rejection of the incumbent create, loot and share government’s presidential candidate, particularly when the candidate was either the Vice President or a leading Minister in the out-going regime. The electorate has historically exhibited an awareness of incumbent governments’ ploy to deliberately postpone the commissioning of completed, uncompleted, and other infrastructural development projects to be commissioned close to national elections for purposes of diversionary propaganda to cover up their mismanagement of the public purse, abuse of power, and corruption. Nonetheless, this incumbent government has never learnt any lessons from the rhymes of history from its predecessors. 

The electorate knows that: “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” The corrupt and looting government machinery of Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia are so power-drunk that they only see the ordinary Ghanaian as a zombified idiot whose vote can be bought after dangling a few television pictures, news broadcasts, and other media propaganda of completed and uncompleted projects to becloud his memory. 

Ghana Web has an archive of publications of the political campaigns of the NDC Government and other contesting candidates during the months leading up to the 7 December 2000 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The reader may just limit himself to the period from October 2000 to 5 December 2000. He will not fail to notice the similarity in the commissioning of completed and uncompleted infrastructural development projects and the President attending the Graduation Parade of the Ghana Military Academy, Wings Parade of the Ghana Air Force, and holding meetings with security personnel at the Air Force Station which is rhyming during the 2024 election season. 

I was the running mate to Vice-President Mills for the 2000 Presidential elections and one of those among the NDC Ministers who were amused by the displays of incumbency abuse at the airborne dropping of paratroopers during the Graduation of the Ghana Military Academy. The crowd followed Professor Mills and me wherever we went. Chiefs opened their stool and skin rooms, pouring libation with schnapps invoking their ancestors to assure the NDC of victory with the reminder not to forget them when victory came. Professor Mills and I, nonetheless, lost the elections to John Agyekum Kufour and his running mate. Jerry John Rawlings handed over to the winner on 7 January 2001. And despite all the John Agyekum Kufour harassment of Jerry John Rawlings, Professor Mills even when he was away in Canada, and NDC Ministers and operatives including myself, Ghana endured. 

Ghana Web also has an archive of publications of the political campaigns of the NPP Government and other contesting candidates during the three months leading up to the 7 December 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The reader will not fail to notice the similarity in the commissioning of completed and uncompleted infrastructural development projects. Most Ghanaians had never seen the large campaign billboards with the pictures of Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, and aeroplanes dropping NPP campaign leaflets and other paraphernalia in a display of the abuse of incumbency for the NPP’s contesting candidates. The electorate felt insulted and Nana Akufo-Addo/Dr. Bawumia lost the elections to Professor Mills and John Dramani Mahama. There was no victimization of the failed candidates from the NPP, as Prof. Mills was averse to any vengeance. Ghana endured. 

Similar rhymes of history in the commissioning of completed and uncompleted infrastructural development projects will be read from the Ghana Web archival records from October 2016 to 5 December 2016. The economic situation, miscalculations of the mode of the electorate, and the presentation of Nana Akufo-Addo as the messiah to eradicate corruption and redeem the economy deceived the electorate into voting for Nana Akufo-Addo/Dr Mahamudu Bawumia into power at the polls on 7 December 2016. John Dramani Mahama handed over power peacefully to Nana Akufo-Addo on 7 January 2017. 

Nana Akufo-Addo the messiah turned out to be the curse of the nation with a government of family, friends and cronies creating, looting, and sharing our national resources amongst themselves with wanton abandon to the misery of the electorate and the ordinary person in the street. The economy has been so messed up that every Ghanaian took a haircut with broken bottles as the instrument of the haircut only for our President to exhibit opulence and splendour flying in private chartered planes to visit and enjoy the most profane of receptions and congratulations abroad for looting our resources for his masters. 

Now, between October and November 2024 alone, the President is commissioning road interchanges as though it is the first time the electorate is seeing road interchanges in his economic misery. Uncompleted Bank of Ghana skyscrapers were commissioned, and the only STEM Senior High School in the former Northern Territories was commissioned in the Vice President’s mother’s village, Kpasenkpe, in his native West Mamprusi Municipal Assembly area in the North East Region, a few kilometres from Kadema, my village in the south of the Upper East Region. The only Watermelon factory for Northern Ghana was commissioned again in the West Mamprusi Municipal Assembly area at Logri which is not known in even the North East Region as an area producing the highest volume of watermelons. Watermelons have to be transported from the Upper East Region to feed this project when even Nalerigu in the East Mamprusi Municipality produces more watermelons than the Logri area. 

President Nana Akufo-Addo crowns his presidency like Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings with the Graduation Parade of the Ghana Military Academy, Wings Parade of the Ghana Air Force, and holding meetings with security personnel at the Air Force Station oblivious of the rhyme of history during the 2024 election season. When on Tuesday, 5 December 2000 President Jerry Rawlings met the Security agencies at the Air Force Station, Accra, all hell broke loose in the media and the NPP. Nana Akufo-Addo is the Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, and his Vice-President and presidential candidate for the 2024 elections is the Chairperson of the Armed Forces Council and the Ghana Police Council. One would, therefore, think that they were performing their official duties and not political electioneering campaigning at those functions. 

The abuse of government incumbency became obvious when Dr Mahamudu Bawumia could not hide the intentions of election interference today, 1 December 2024, by calling on health workers, media practitioners, and security personnel in the country to vote for him as they vote early in the special voting on Monday, 2 December 2024. Pleading with the security personnel, Joy News reported Dr Bawumia as follows: "We inherited a security sector facing numerous challenges, but we have significantly strengthened the ranks across our security agencies." He concluded thus: “I humbly ask for your support to continue the good work we have begun. When you go to the voting booth, vote for me.” Balderdash, pure and simple! 

Eleven other candidates are contesting to be President of Ghana and presenting themselves to the electorate to be considered for the winning votes. However, the pronouncements of President Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Bawumia leave one with one and only one conclusion, that out of the other eleven contesting candidates, they see only one credible and formidable candidate in the person of former President John Dramani Mahama. Consequently, upon the least pretext, both President Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia exhibit fear, and paranoia, of the possibility of former President Mahama winning the 7 December 2024. 

Nana Akufo-Addo appears to have become so paranoid and obsessed with John Mahama winning the Presidency that he has forgotten the common courtesies a sitting President must extend to former preceding colleagues, particularly, the immediate past President who generously conceded defeat to make it possible for his inauguration on 7 December 2017. As the elections draw closer, Nana Akufo-Addo’s paranoia and obsession is growing worse and validating my thesis on Nana Akufo-Addo’s long game to rig the 2024 elections. 

On 26 November 2024, Ghana Web reported Nana Akufo-Addo as saying that: "I have no doubts in my mind that between Bawumia and Mahama, Bawumia is the best person who can continue the good works of the NPP. ... For John Mahama, he hasn’t appreciated anything the NPP has done... He doesn’t appreciate the work the work this government has done.” Then, Joy News reported this morning, 1 December 2024, that when speaking at a stakeholders' engagement in the Volta Regional capital of Ho, the President stated: “I genuinely believe that the two main contestants seeking office in Ghana today to be the sixth President of the Fourth Republic, he [Dr Bawumia] is a superior choice.” Impunity! 

Only autocrats insist that their preferred and anointed candidate must win elections under their watch. The rhymes of history in Ghana previously show that the electorate determines who is superior for any elections and not the incumbent President and his preferred candidate. The rhymes of the history of the Fourth Republican Constitution are testimony that the electorate has confidence in changing their government every eight years to audit the performance of the previous government in executing their mandate for their eight-year tenure. The 1992 Constitution has endured such changes without any mishap. 

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is clearly Nana Akufo-Addo’s clone and poodle who will conceal all the public purse looting sins they committed together within their eight-year tenure from 7 January 2017 to & January 2025. One can only fear a person one perceives to be superior in acumen to him and not his subordinate and poodle. Consequently, if Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia are afraid of a John Dramani Mahama Presidency which is going to last not more than four years and give the electorate the opportunity to secure accountability and transparency from this government, then Ghana and the 1992 Constitution may be the better for such a change. Ghana is not the patrimony of Nana Akufo-Addo and his government of family, friends, and cronies. 

The electorate has the right to make a choice from the other eleven contesting candidates having in mind who has the experience and disassociation from the current government amongst them to uncover the loot of the public purse and mismanagement of Ghana over the last eight years. Change at the 2024 elections will be the only way patriotic citizens and the electorate can effectively preserve and defend the 1992 Constitution from the dynastic anointment of a Dr Mahamudu Bawumia succession to continue the looting. Nana Akufo-Addo has self-confessed that John Dramani Mahama is the one he fears most to conduct an audit on behalf of the electorate, and so be it, as probity is the rock of our Constitution. I did not say it, Nana Akufo-Addo self-confessed it. Let us defend the Constitution by demanding probity and accountability, now on 7 December 2024! 

Martin A. B. K. Amidu
1 December 2024