Former President John Rawlings
We should not forget that Nigerians, at least most of those whom we have met and known for many years now, love and admire Rawlings.
That is to say, it is surprising how extremely popular Rawlings is with most Nigerians we have come across.
But, this scandalous controversy is already threatening to completely dismantle the walled glasshouse of incorruptibility which he has managed to build around him for all these years, with his own vacillating Abacha’s stone of admission.
Now those Nigerians are turning up the heat on Rawlings and leaving his camp en masse…And now Rawlings’ legacy and rhetoric of public diplomacy are being vigorously questioned, watched and debated across the world by these same former Nigerian supporters of his…What really happened to change the course of history in which Rawlings singularly once stood at the
center of the world, his world, the world of his own ideas…probity…accountability…transparency…June 4th Revolution…June 4th Uprising?
Rawlings, the world’s famous moralistic Lionel Messi…is now a tax evader…Shakespeare…The evil men do lives after them…The good is oft interred with their bones…No pregnancy, some say, can hide forever…and forever is ever…Rap duo Outcast…Forever…Forever…Ever…Forever…Ever?...Ms. Jackson!
Rawlings, Ghana’s infallible Pope Francis and Mother Teresa…is not Kennedy Agyapong’s Afia Schwarzenegger…
Who can investigate the governments of Rawlings, Kufuor, Mills…and John Mahama?
Could it be Akufo-Addo?
How can Rawlings sell Akufo-Addo as incorruptible when his own presumed incorruptibility and credibility are at stake?
Could it Paa Kwesi Nduom?
Forget him. He has some allegiance to the NPP and Kufuor! And he also did work with both Rawlings and the NDC! Paa Kwesi Nduom is a Machiavellian hypocrite!
Could it be Ivor Greenstreet?
We have not forgotten Madam Samia Nkrumah’s allegation that the NDC funded his presidential candidacy in the CPP, plus the fact that the questionable speed with which he came to President Mahama’s defense during the so-called Ford Expedition Controversy leaves a lot to be desired.
Could it be Madam Akua Donkor?
No answer! A rhetorical question!
Could it be Madam Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings?
Ask Akufu-Addo and Rawlings himself!
Madam Agyeman-Rawlings carries a heavy baggage of scandalous controversies on her political hunchback!
Could it have been possible that Rawlings used some of the money to defray the near-prohibitive tuition and boarding fees of his four children?
What has his wife got to say about this money?
How does Rawlings now compare with Mills, the man he does not want to see resurrect from the shadows of the dead, in terms of transparency, probity and accountability?
Are there more to the translucent character of Rawlings that we probably do not know of?
Now, Owusu Bempah, a politician in the Konadu-Rawlings camp, is passing the buck to Totobi Kwakye and Obed Asamoah rather than to Rawlings, the same who reportedly who admitted to accepting or receiving the money in behalf of Ghana.
The fact is that this scandalous doppelganger of money promises to raise serious questions about Rawlings’ proverbial rhetoric of accountability, probity and transparency.
The question is: Did Rawlings and the leadership of the NDC question the source of the money…whether it was drug money or stolen from the Nigerian national coffers, or both?
His open admission after eighteen years raises more questions than answers…a Pandora’s box.
Then also Rawlings, who has questioned the moral subtext and social-political implications of Ayi Kwei Armah’s magnum opus, seems to take umbrage at the latter for his bold titular statement that “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,” yet he, too, that is Rawlings, and the scandalous controversy trailing him, the latter of which now takes after the metaphoric description Oyo assigns her conscientious husband, an anonymous character Armah calls “the man,” and a metaphoric description typical of Rawlings and the current dilemma he is confronted with, which, among other characterizations, are captured in the novelistic portrayal of the mysterious bird “chichidodo.” The chichidodo:
“Hates excrement with all its soul. But the chichidodo only feeds on maggots, and you know the maggots grow inside the lavatory.”
But Rawlings has ably demonstrated to Ghana, Africa and the rest of the world that he comes in more than one beautiful package…that he is not only the mysterious chichidodo bird but a chameleon as well…even more than that, an infallible chameleonic chichidodo with peacock plumage…
A combination that makes the late Mills, his nemesis, look like a virgin angel who just dropped from the hymenal pudendum….of the Virgin Islands…of childlike innocence, of infallibility…
No wonder Mills hates the hymeneal dirge his onetime mentor Rawlings, has been singing and humming and singing and humming…now and then…Rawlings the anti-corruption guru…is not a man of his words…rather a man whose anti-corruption words the chichidodo bird now refuses to eat…
Why?...Because they have too many worms…Because the worms are hidden in the secret wicked heart of human feces…And because they also smell so bad…nauseating…hypocritical to the bone!...Rawlings, a crazy baldhead…we gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of town…Bob Marley…
The immortal Rawlings, the paedomorphic father of his own grandfather, the late John Evans Atta Mills…is as pure and as infallible and as angelic as the Virgin Cave of the mother of Buddha, of Gautama Buddha, of Siddhartha Gautama…The Gohonzon…Nam-myoho-renge-kyo!
Chameleon Chichidodo, a Rawlings-now-turned Bill Clinton, says also:
“I didn’t say I was holier than thou, I said I tried. I never denied that I used marijuana…When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and didn’t like it… I didn’t inhale, and I didn’t try it again…I told the truth. I thought it was funny. And the only journalist who was there said I told the truth.”
The truth? Is it the marijuana-inspired $US2 million or $US5 million? Or that Abacha was under the influence of marijuana and did not count the money he would be dashing his Ghanaian friend?
“I told the truth?” Which truth? Which truth did Bill Clinton coach his friend, Rawlings, to tell Ghanaians?
The truth according to Afroman’s “Because I Got High”?
Further, his [Rawlings’] statement to the effect that “We had our pride and our dignity was not out for sale” and still went ahead to accept the money indicate a political character sitting on a bombshell of moral contradictions.
Why did Abacha give away that huge sum of money other than Rawlings’ statement that Ghana needed it at the time?
Could it be that Abacha too knew about the dire state of the Ghanaian economy?
And why did he, Rawlings, not call Abacha to thank him for this windfall of a godly-sent largesse?
This is why we need to collaborate with the Nigerians to get to the bottom of this issue, for, after all, both countries have a lot to learn from it. Thus, we shall call for Rawlings to be investigated the same we call for Kufuor to be investigated in the wake of the Panama Papers’ disclosures.
This also means that we reject Hackman Owusu-Agyeman’s policy position that Rawlings be forgiven for publicly admitting to taking the money and in his words, he, Rawlings, should “go and sin no more.”
In fact, such policy positions perpetuate immunity and entrenches public corruption in high places.
This is the kind of policy thinking that has ensured that we do not make any headway in the fight against public corruption.
One would also have thought that Hackman should have at least owned up to the “hack” in his first name, Hackman.
Rather, on the other hand we think Dr. Henry Lartey, the presidential candidate of the Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), makes more sense on how to go about the Rawlings-Abacha controversy than the lame policy position being advanced and circulated by Hackman in the media. This is a serious scandal which deserves the attention of all well-meaning Ghanaians.
Now some Nigerians are even asking their President Buhari to return the money…even as one journalist Louis Odion has alleged that General Abdulsalami Abbuakar asked Rawlings to refund the said money, a request to which the latter refused to comply with…
Odion has also alleged that Abacha used the money to buy Rawlings’ silence…Rawlings, Odion’s “Junior Jesus” transforms himself into an “ultimate political Judas,” has painfully described Abacha as “one hell of a nationalist…Abacha saved the country,’” comments that no doubt directly offend or attack the ethnic and political sensibilities of millions of Nigerians…
And yet, Rawlings is asking for a polygraph test to confirm receiving $US2 million and not one for Gwarzo and his colleagues who claimed he was rather given $US5 million! Why did he not ask for one some eighteen years ago when he and his party vehemently denied it? Is polygraph testing even scientifically reliable?
Where is Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings to shed some light on this disgraceful conduct of our ex-president, her husband?
Moreover, understanding the psychology of the Ghanaian (and African) political leadership should part and parcel of the national enterprise of soul-searching. Dr. Lartey for one, believes Abacha may have given Rawlings $US5 million and not the $US2 million he, the latter, has been trumpeting all over the place in the media. In fact there are several others, like Kweku Baako, Jr., who believe same. This is why we are asking the appropriate authorities to prosecute a serious investigation into this matter, a request that we think should be executed in the best interest of the country.
This is a cause conscionable Ghanaians should undertake if they can adhere to Soyinka who said sometime ago:
“I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.”
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
We have made a number of important critiques of our winner-takes-all duopolistic culture which tends to benefit political parties and individuals than the nation. This observation is borne of our experience.
We recall our days at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, particularly those chaotic debating periods at Always Around” when students of various political, ideological and religious persuasions met to argue and to debate diverse topics of interest to the country.
Students appeared on “Always Around,” of Unity Hall (Conti”), pretending to be supporters of the NDC but were actually not.
We also saw this hypocrisy on the part of those students who claimed to be supporters of the NPP but were also actually not.
We had this NDC friend on our floor who kept sacs of money which he dished out to those NPP-pretending supporters once they had shown their NDC party cards. This experience caused us to question our friend who could not provide convincing answers about the source of those sacs of money.
Later we would hear of similar experiences at various university and polytechnic campuses when Kufuor and the NPP took over the country.
Some of these student leaders are not parliamentarians, politicians, and political advisors and strategists to the two leading political parties, the NDC and the NPP.
But beyond all these corrupt practices, we also saw some leading and ordinary members of the NDC relocate to the United States, among others, where they lived open lavish lifestyles.
Yes, they had relocated because they were scared of the Kufuor administration prosecuting them.
It was the same when the NDC and the Mills administration took over. Some of those NPP members who were scared of being prosecuted for corrupt practices left the country, to lavishly spend their booties in America and other places.
We will not mention names, whether of members of the NDC or of the NPP. This is why we have always argued for a third political force in Ghana, a third force that will destroy our winner-takes-all duopoly. Of course, Rawlings has proven again why it is so difficult to trust a politician.
We shall return with a final installment, Part 3!
REFERENCES
Adedayo Showemimo. “82 Famous Quotes Of Wole Soyinka As Nobel Laureate Clocks 82.” July 13, 2016.
Ghanaweb. Rawlings & ‘Bribe: Ask Totobi Kwakye, Obed Asamoah…Owusu Bempah.” July 14, 2016.
Ghanaweb. “Go And Sin No More…Hackman Tells Rawlings.” July 12, 2016.
Ghanaweb. “Prosecute Rawlings Over $5M ‘Bribe’…Henry Lartey.” July 15, 2016.
Eliana Dockterman. “Clinton: I Never Denied Smoking Pot.” Time Magazine. December 3, 2013.
Louis Odion. “Rawlings And Abacha’s Blood Money.” Ghanaweb. July 15, 2016.
Ghanaweb. “Full Txt Of Rawlings’ Interview With The Guardian Newspaper Of Nigeria.” July 16, 2016.