By Margaret Jackson
July 26, 2013
Former President, John Agyekum Kufuor is very well known as one chap who never waits for someone to praise him for anything that he has done. He always seizes any moment to blow his own ego. Because he does not believe in posterity! He believes in telling those who have ears to listen what he believes his accomplishments are.
Otherwise, you will not often hear President Kufuor seizing opportunities to claim that he is the best president that Ghana has ever had while forgetting the series of corruption that rocked his government and severely put him under pressure till the day he left office.
It is in this same vein that Kufuor again blew hot air by claiming that he grew Ghana’s economy by five folds in the 8 years that he presided over the affairs of the nation. The occasion was an interview with Adom TV’s Badwam program to expand on his statement that ex-Prime Minister, Dr KA Busia, was the Elijah while he is the Elisha, in reference to the biblical Elijah/Elisha era where the former left his mantle to the latter.
President Kufuor further stated that the unprecedented economic achievements under his wing reflected positively in the health of Ghanaians and the nation at large, just as the policies of Busia during the Second Republic.
But what Kufuor failed to tell Ghanaians was that it was the chaotic economic conditions that Busia plunged the country into that led to his ouster by General Kutu Acheampong and his clique. For record purposes it was Busia who introduced the Alien Compliance Order and drove tens of thousands of aliens mostly Nigerians from Ghana which led to the collapse of middle level commerce in Ghana.
Kofi Abrefa Busia who gave the aliens between 14 days and 3 months to leave was so ruthless with that bogus order that it led to the abandonment of properties by thousands of Nigerians who have acquired them in Ghana.
The citizens of Ghana were later repaid by Busia’s blunder when in 1983; the Nigerian government also expelled over two million Africans from Nigeria. Out of the huge number there were over 700,000 Ghanaians who due to the oil boom in Nigeria have gone there to seek greener pastures.
Again, Kufuor hid from Ghanaians the fact that if indeed his policies were something to write home about, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will not be in court today fighting over pink sheets. Akufo-Addo would have won the 2008 Elections hands down!
In this our age, no right thinking person will want to discard anything good. Therefore, if Kufuor’s “Yenkye Endi” (Let’s Split And Chop) economic policy was anything that benefitted the large segment of Ghanaians, there was no way Ghanaians would have shown the NPP the exit during the 2008 Elections.
The fact that the NPP lost the 2008 Elections was a clear indication that a large proportion of Ghanaians were left out of Kufuor’s looting brigade which descended as a masquerading force bent on raping the country at every front.
In the end, Akufo-Addo could not defend Kufuor’s bad economic policies and naked economic rape which would not have sold to Ghanaians. Akufo-Addo was therefore left with the only option of promising the moon and turning Ghana into the Mecca of Africa which led to his first defeat by the late President Evans Atta Mills by a whisker.
Today, shameless Kufuor who stated that corruption started during the time of Adam and therefore, he does not know how to deal with corruption in his government, has the guts to tell Ghanaians that he grew the economy of Ghana by how many folds?
Ex-President Kufuor will be better off if he keeps his mouth shut, because anytime he opens his mouth to praise himself, he painfully reminds the NPP folks about who cost them the 2008 Elections and why they are still in opposition.
Achievements sell, therefore, in political campaigns politicians normally run on achievements or records. Therefore, why is it that Akufo-Addo could not run on any of Kufuor’s achievements during the last two elections which he lost them all? It is because Akufo-Addo had nothing to run on since Kufuor’s so-called achievements stink and was therefore nothing to write home about.
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