SaCut Amenga-Etego

Political propaganda distorts reality. That is what makes it dangerous. It is dangerous to the electorate who require the reality to inform their electoral decision during elections. In the end, when an electoral decision is based on post-truths, the masses end up voting against their own interests without even knowing the consequences of their decision.

The propagandists themselves are not immune to the dangers of their own weapons of mass deception when the propaganda they churn out takes control of their own thinking – it makes them ignorant of reality. The reality that we-the-people are not stupid and we are capable of reading between the lines. The incumbent NPP government must not be confused – not even for a second – about the discernment of the masses.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the NPP Flagbearer, President Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP party and government machinery have become victims of their own intrigues. They have become ignorant of the reality that the people of Ghana have had enough of their dirty governance, state capture, corrupted state institutions, compromised judiciary, and partisan electoral commissioners. 

Their arrogance of power has not only blinded them so severely, it has also taken away all their other senses of tasting, smelling or hearing the voices of the masses who are now calling for their heads on the death row. Some of us who have been on the ground know this because we feel it, we smell it, we taste it, we see it and we hear it from the people.

Arrogance of power clearly has also shortened their memory of the political and electoral history of Ghana. Otherwise, they would remember that when unpopular incumbent governments in the past decided to throw dust into the eyes of the masses just before elections, they were ignominiously rejected by the people.

When an unpopular regime takes control of the entire media echo-system prior to elections, they forget that the compromised media may only be responsible for misfeeding the minds of the people but their stomachs are responsible for feeding their electoral decisions. We-the-people have been famished for the past eight years. We don’t need the presstitute media to tell us how we feel. We are angry!

The NPP lost the elections in 2008 despite blacking out the final NDC rally before that election. Before that, they took over every front page of every newspaper for the several months leading up to the 2008 elections. Nana Addo was the candidate and Bawumia was his running mate. Yet, in 2024, the NPP under the same leadership has decided that they will again rely on the rented presstitutes to do a media blackout of the NDC including the final rally on Thursday, December 5, 2024 with their own rally on the same day. They have also rented every front page of every newspaper in the country for the past several months.

When will the NPP learn that the masses have already decided to put them on death row?

The people of Ghana did not forgive the NPP in 2008 after President J.A Kufuor arrogantly spent the suffering tax payer’s money in the lead-up to that election to put a gold necklace on his neck in self-glory as a corrupt leader who told us that corruption started from Adam. And yet, arrogance of power did not allow President Nana Akufo-Addo to learn from that history before using the suffering tax payer’s money to put up a statue of himself and shamelessly hastened to commission it in pomp and pageantry ahead of the 2024 elections in Takoradi and in mockery of we-the-suffering masses.

Clearly, the pretending Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has been fully initiated into the political intrigues of the NPP and his god-father Akufo-Addo. Hunted by his own past empty rhetoric about economic wizardry, he has failed one of the cardinal principles of political imagery – consistency.

Dr. Bawumia suddenly abandoned his so-called economic prowess in the face of the compelling economic failure of the NPP government and transmogrified himself into a technological wizard responsible for everything digital including institutions and technological infrastructure that were built several years before he even became politically exposed. One wonders what he will tell us about himself the next time he attempts to run for President again. Perhaps, that he is now an agriculturalist with the magic wand to give Ghana food security?

 A man supposedly with a PhD in economics suddenly cannot take responsibility for the failed Ghana cedi and the highly indebted economy and the associated poverty that he has produced but wants to pretend that the Ghana card is his brainchild and the solution to all our problems.

For those who are fooled by the pretending vice president, let it be known to them that the national identification secretariat was set up to implement and manage the national identification system in 2003 and the Act establishing the national identification authority was passed in 2006 all under President J.A Kufuor with Professor Earnest Dumor appointed as the first Executive Secretary.

Between August 2008 and July 2009, under President Mills, the NIA executed mass registrations in the Western, Eastern and Volta regions.

It was in 2019 when the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), the core platform technology for the NIS, which enables accurate and prompt fingerprint matching with real-time accessibility was launched by the Authority and registration began nationwide.

Where was Dr. Bawumia in all this process of institutional building that produced the current Ghana card which provides a digital footprint for all Ghanaians and non-Ghanaian residents? He was clearly nowhere near it. He even claims credit for MoMo which began in 2009 under the NDC government with MTN followed by Airtel and Tigo in 2010 and 2012.

Even the Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) that allows users to transfer money across mobile networks and bank accounts is operated by the Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlements Systems (GhIPSS) which was set up in 2007 with a mandate to implement and manage interoperable payment system infrastructures for banks and non-bank financial institutions in Ghana.

At no point in the development of these digital infrastructures was Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia involved in the governance or management of our economy. He was not even at the bank of Ghana. And yet, he claims that he is now a digital messiah! He thinks this is an easy way to avoid his personal responsibility for the failed economy.

All hail Bawumia, aka Bawuliar!

In any case, we the masses are driven by macro and microeconomics. We are more interested in prevailing high food prices, high cost of health services, high transport fares, unaffordable and uncontrolled rental housing, low-quality education in the name of FSHS, the lack of employment opportunities, starving wages, the falling Ghana cedi all of which have characterised almost 8 years of our lives under the NPP government.

We are more interested in how the purse has been abused for the benefit of a few and at the expense of the masses, the destruction of our river bodies and cocoa farms by galamsey kingpins associated with the NPP party and government, some of who have even had the audacity to go to Essikado constituency to run for parliament while the OSP is on their heels after Anas Aremeyaw Anas exposed them taking bribe money as a member of a government anti-galamsey task-force.

President Akufo-Addo has become more renowned as a clearing agent of corruption than any other attribute during his eight years in power. Martin Amidu, former special prosecutor appointed by Akufo-Addo had to resign from his post upon the realisation that the President who appointed him to fight corruption is himself ‘’The mother serpent of corruption hiding under the innocent flower’’. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, hand-picked and trained by the mother serpent of corruption will not just be a clearing agent of corruption when elected President, he will institutionalise it, promote it and glorify it. He will not even investigate corruption let alone clear corrupt officials.

This year, the OSP arrested and charged an administrator at the office of the vice President named James Keck Osei along with two senior officers at the Ghana revenue authority who purportedly used fictitious documents to steal 10.000 bags of imported rice from a business man, and which bags of rice Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia eventually used in Ramadan donations. Remember that the special prosecutor is an appointee of the ruling NPP government. Clearly, Dr. Bawumia has mastered the trade of the mother serpent of corruption, Nana Akufo-Addo and must not be allowed to ply his corrupt trade in our polity.

When Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says ‘’it is possible’’, be sure that what is most possible is for Bawumia to act worse than Nana Akufo-Addo as President. And any potential President who could be worse than Nana Akufo-Addo must NEVER be allowed to take the reins of power - unless we want Ghana to BURN!

President John Mahama has been President before. And those who called him incompetent and asked us to vote him out and give them power to do better have rather proven to be chronically deficient and farcical.

President John Mahama fought corruption without fear or favour when he was President. He even prosecuted and jailed Abuga Pele, one of his own appointees at the National Youth Employment Agency, for corruption. He was never a clearing agent for corrupt government officials nor was he trained by a corrupt President. That is the kind of President Ghana needs to be able to restore dignity and democratic accountability in our country.

As they say, the voice of the people is the voice of God. And the Voice of the People will speak for the NDC and John Mahama on December 7, 2024 to unchain Ghana from the grotesque grip of corruption for the greater good of our motherland!

SaCut Amenga-Etego

December 2, 2024.