A Letter To Ex-President Mahama


Mr. Mahama,

I was filled with speechless trepidation when I read a story attributed to you on citinewsroom.com in which you exasperatingly poured out your frustrations about the level of silence on the 'massive' corruption under the Akufo-Addo administration.

In your declamations, you wondered why the media, civil society organizations and the clergy have all laid to rest their senses of patriotism and the watchdog roles they are known for in voicing out against acts of corruption under the Akufo-Addo presidency.

You are befuddled by the 'lack of interest' being exhibited by the media and the Ghanaian populace over the many reported cases of corruption under the current regime.

Without mincing words, I would heartily tell you why you were always making the news on corruption issues and this administration is not. It is not as though the media, civil society organizations and the clergy are so much in love with President Akufo-Addo, the fact of the matter is that one cannot criticize in a vacuum. How do you expect them to castigate this administration when there are no basis to do so?

How can ghost busters go ghost hunting when no one has died? It would amount to chasing after the wind to embark on such an expedition of criticizing the Akufo-Addo government on crimes they have not committed.

Your party, since your humiliating defeat at the polls, has been fabricating stories and singing hymns of corruption with the hope that the media and the Ghanaian populace would welcome them and bombard the government with same. It doesn't work like that. Stop living in the stone ages!

Loath as I am to use this expression, honesty compels me to state that if you nurtured the thoughts that the Ghanaian people would swallow the craps you people spewed out there, then it is a figment of your perverted imagination, for want of a better expression!

Gullibility may have held members of the NDC captive, the same cannot be said about the discerning minds out there. You invented your own fairytales and wanted the good people of Ghana to accept them? They won't!

Sir, you once said that Ghanaians easily forget, they were aghast over that description even though you still held on firmly to that unscientific belief system of yours. I am of the firm belief that you told Ghanaians your own flaw, not theirs.

You appear to have forgotten why you were always in the news for the wrong reasons as far as corruption was concerned. I would do you a favor by itemizing some of the classical cases of corruption which the media, civil society organizations and the clergy could not show blind eyes to under your reign.

Under your regime, Ghanaians cried lustily over the pervasive corruption that engulfed your appointees. We sobbed ourselves to sleep because of the high-pitched level of corruption under your watch.

What was worse was the fact that whilst your appointees were gleefully plundering from the state's coffers, you, the then president, was captivated by the bandwagon effects of what they were doing. You plunged your entire body into the looting of the country's resources without blinking an eye.

You stooped so low to the extent that you allowed yourself to be influenced by a Ford Expedition by Djibril Kanazoe, a fact that won him sumptuous contracts in the country. You expected the media to hold their tongues and pens in the face of these stinking corrupt acts under your administration?

When you mortgaged about 58% of our bauxite deposits to your brother, you should have expected that the media and all Ghanaians would kick against it!

I am pretty sure you still remember SADA, GYEEDA, SUBA, bus branding, Waterville, Woyome and all the other fraudulent judgment debts you paid. The media, civil society organizations and the clergy would definitely not go mute on these.

You profligately used our monies to buy cars and shared same to your party people for no work done. You recklessly spent our monies on Akua Donkor, buying her two cars and a mansion for no apparent reason.

You wasted our taxes on frivolities like some Arabian King who had money to burn. It is shocking that you find it shocking that you were always being criticized for corruption.

Deep down in your soul, you know that these happenings under your reign have never happened under the Akufo-Addo government.

We don't need to overstretch our imaginations to figure out that your reign is the most corrupt in our political history. You are second to none in our history in terms of corruption. I would advise you to refrain from topics bordering on corruption because you are the undisputed champion in that field.

I have noticed something. Since your elevation as the flagbearer of the opposition NDC, you have failed to make the news. Even Alban Sumana Bagbin makes news headlines more than you do, and this might have informed you to make such a statement so as to make the news. You can't make the news with such a topic which condemned you to the perdition named opposition!

P.K. Sarpong, Whispers from the Corridors of the Thinking Place.