Okada accident
John Mahama and the National Democratic Congress, thinking they are playing the goat that drops its excreta just anywhere because it is smart enough not to be the one to step on it, are facing the battle of their lives over their retrograde ‘okada and galamsey’ 2020 campaign.
They know, though they refuse to admit, that even the Free SHS programme alone continues to give them sleepless nights since its launch and immediate implementation three years ago.
That is aside of the equally cutting-edge social protection initiatives in which the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party administration is investing and re-investing.
As the NDC itself would admit, many of the initiatives have not only received continental applause, but also global recognition – with the Ghana models attracting appreciation and implementation across continents.
Waste and rat killer politics
Like Nero fiddling when Rome burned, John Dramani Mahama and his band continue to take politics to clown proportions, as evidenced in the ongoing ‘okada’ debate – even though we know that the Okada Boys who rode in droves to pay homage to Mahama at his recent radio interview are NDC members.
It is not strange because the NDC has been known to be good at theory, and deficient when it comes to results as is evidenced in the several waste management initiatives it dreamed, including Okoe Vanderpuye’s CONTI project which failed to tick.
Then, we had its housing projects like Saglemi; agricultural projects like the SADA scam; mass transport initiatives like ill-fated AYA LOLO, with its Gbawe-Mallam Park gone waste; and ‘Sports Development Projects’ in which funds were in jute sacks on chartered flights – with footballers, technocrats and spectators –paid manually.
Lost opportunities
Being ill-researched, the NDC manifesto ignored the gaping opportunities at Agbogbloshie to formalize the plastic and metal scrap ‘kokompe’ markets and the ongoing messy cross-border trade in foodstuffs in an environment of filth and squalor.
They ignored opportunities in transforming the cocoa sector to attract agribusiness students, preferring to have them join barking political groups for coins, rather than creating opportunities for them to lead fulfilling, independent lives and contributing to national development.
The NDC, ignorant of basic tenets of development, ignored gnawing opportunities in leading local government agencies in tidying up our streets, markets and beaches, as part of the efforts in boosting tourism as well as managing sanitation in a manner that generates jobs, including designing model lavatory facilities that ordinary households can afford.
Worse still, the NDC ignored protecting our forests, arable lands and water bodies and harnessing these resources for the benefit of communities and the future of the nation.
It appears that 30 years of being in office, particularly under John Dramani Mahama, has done the NDC little good and exposure, culminating in the ‘okada and galamsey’ debate, which will only revert Ghana to the three per cent growth Mahama left behind, after picking it from eight per cent.
Smart electorate
Unfortunately, it is not everybody in Ghana who would be fooled by the unholy antics of the clowns in the NDC. The signs that Mahama was desperate had been there since 2012, when he elected to pull a fast one on Ghanaians, culminating in an election petition which exposed him and his lieutenants in the Executive as mercenary, fraudulent politicians – without any sense of shame.
With so many dozens of NDC supporters defecting from the NDC, nationwide, to join the NPP, it is only a matter of time for Mahama to return to his bed on December 7, dripping in cold sweat over yet another humiliating defeat.
That will be when he would have understood, perhaps too late, that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia’s alternative of offering Okada Boys cars, instead of motorbikes, and under an efficient arrangement, is the better and enduring option in urban transport.
Source: dailystatesman.com.gh/leader
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