Dear Fati, who has failed abysmally here? Mahama or Nana

I have read your letter. I take it that you have not paid attention to IMANI’s 21 years of active, passionate activism. If you had done that, you would have noticed that we care so much about Ghana that we literally beat up any political leader who invests in careless and wasteful leadership. We have not spared either the NDC or the NPP.

I have heard many proclaim and swear that I belong to the NPP (when I was pictured drinking Kallypo) and NDC, as I happily reminded Ghanaians of the excruciating mess the Nana Addo administration was leaving behind.

I see you attempted to compare the records of Nana Addo and John Mahama. Actually, here is a better comparison.

John Dramani Mahama wrote his first economic governance exams in 2016 and passed with a B- rated mark by external examiners- rating agencies.

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Nana Addo boasted they would beat Mahama’s B-rated mark with real men. They sat and thought through it all and appointed 123 ministers & over 1200 presidential staffers, claiming the number was right, so they could fix Ghana. The “we have the men” and “What a solid team” mantra turned into ” economically impotent and incompetent men” who are simply “area boys”.

After 8 years of reckless borrowing with over 780 billion cedis in debt, they succeeded in moving Mahama’s B-rated economy to junk status. They literally pickpocketed the savings and investments of the aged and defenceless senior citizens. They promised no financial haircuts for many, many Ghanaians, and we were not going to the IMF. These events turned out to be outright lies.

So, who has failed abysmally here? Mahama or Nana?

By the way, last November, 2024, an executive of Kosmos Energy confirmed that John Mahama’s tenure saw a $13bn investment ( the highest Foreign Direct Investment attracted by any president in the fourth republic) into the most critical sectors – oil and energy and infrastructure, such as the Terminal 3 – in just four years. The benefits from those investments were to be reaped from 2017 after the NDC was kicked out of power. That led to the end of dumsor and the relatively better GDP growth in 2017 and 2018. Those positive growth figures, an average 7% were not due to the economic wizardry or dexterity of any team of special, solid men. They were solely due to John Mahama’s far-sightedness.

Sadly, we have done absolutely nothing to build on the oil investments for the past 8 years. Just big talk and high school playground fighting the likes of ENI. Aker deal was so shamefully shambolic that the likes of John Peter Amewu as minister of energy and related agencies, became a huge joke as they missed and messed with basic arithmetic. All the energy ministers since 2017, including NAPO, were just glorified local champions talking big with no substance. All they added was huge judgment debts.

Now, let me repeat what got you so worked up to write what every blind footsoldier of a political party would say..

“Why would any serious presidential hopeful, thinking of breaking with a leadership that failed abysmally, left a junk-rated economy, devoured pensions, looted incalculable amounts, destroyed our environment, ostracised citizens such as SALL and got trashed at the polls, still go and take inspiration from the very source of the bedlam? Ah!”

Finally, if taking and sharing photos with presidents meant I was in their camp politically, then here is a nicer one with our most failed political leader in a generation. Check it out in the comment section under this post. It is the first. He remains my friend.