Akwaaba!
A gush of cold air swept through my face as I stepped out of Arik Air’s Boeing 737 at the Kotoka International Airport, Accra, that January morning in 2007. The time was 7.20 a.m. local time. My heart raced in excitement as a bus conveyed us to the arrival hall. Like I was told by friends, back in Nigeria, who loved Ghana so well they fantasised about the country at the minutest opportunity, the hall was spectacularly clean. Almost spotless. No cracks for roaches and rats. The cooling system was chilling. The lines were orderly and immigration clearance was quick. Nobody wasted passengers’ time with any inanities, or such nonsense as: “Welcome, sir. Anything for the boys?”
By the time I got to baggage claim, my bag was already rolling on the luggage carousel. Everything seemed so perfectly synchronised in this land of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. As I walked towards the exit, a big flag fluffed majestically, directly opposite me. Close to it was a banner bearing the smiling portraits of two sultry ladies, screaming: Akwaaba! Welcome to Ghana! I absorbed all the scenic scenes that flew past our bus as we were driven out of the airport to our hotel located somewhere in the East Legon area of Accra. The journey to the hotel took about 15 minutes. At the best of times, the same journey would have taken at least 45 minutes in Lagos or London; much more in New York or Johannesburg.
Akwaaba! I intoned in excited soliloquy as I flung my bag to the bed in my hotel room. That was in January 2007. It was my first time in Ghana. And I had come to attend a regional media conference organised by the Washington-based The Media Project, on reporting religion. Prior to this time, I had heard a lot of stories about how wonderful Ghana was as a country. I heard about its sublimity; a consummate beauty in the sun. I had also read about its unblinking power supply, the boisterous economy and a strong democratic system that lured the West and international donors to the country. In short, an Eldorado in a continent that had been constantly dogged by the wild, warped stereotypes of the imperial West.
The passage of time had not eroded my exhilaration, during that first visit, as I returned to the country the second time in 2010. I still had that same sense of animated anticipation as I returned to interview Mr. John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor, elder statesman, and top notch of the New Patriotic Party, NPP, who had just finished his second term as President of Ghana. I was then Editor of The Spectator, an upscale human-interest newspaper in the stable of The Sun of Nigeria.
By this time, Ghanaians had voted out the NPP, and Professor Evans John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress, NDC, had been calling the shots as President. Mr. John Dramani Mahama, respected Historian and consummate communicator, was Vice President. He became President when Professor Mills died suddenly on July 24, 2012. Though my journey on that occasion lasted only a week, I assimilated as much of Ghana’s beauty as time would permit.
MEETING MAHAMA
But by the time I returned to the former Gold Coast on Friday, January 3, 2014, I was no longer a visitor. I came to formally resume duty as the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of our newly formed media and entertainment company, The Sun Publishing Ghana Limited. During the course of my duty as a journalist plying his trade in Ghana, I encountered President Mahama thrice. And boy, was I impressed by the infectious humility and geniality of this Gonja man from Bole in the Northern Region! A man of impeccable character, Mahama’s humility is legendary. Even though he is President of one of the most respected democracies in sub-Saharan Africa, Mahama carries no air around himself.
The first time I experienced the uncommon humility of this Gonja man at close range was on Sunday, May 11, 2014. It was at the Manhyia Palace of the Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the 16th Asantehene, paramount ruler of Ashantiland in Kumasi. The occasion was the grand durbar climaxing the celebration of the monarch’s 15th coronation anniversary. President Mahama sat throughout the spectacular event held at the Kumasi Stadium, and soaked all the activities. He also made a powerful speech that set the crowd screaming for more. And when it was time for dignitaries to pay homage to the Otumfuo, President Mahama left the VVIP platform, walked all the way to where the King sat in his majestic splendour, and stooped to congratulate him. That’s one.
One sunny afternoon in June 2015, I went to keep an appointment with Chief Julius Debrah, the Chief of Staff to President Mahama at the Flag Staff House, Ghana’s Presidential Palace. As I was clearing the last security check that would enable me go to the big man that I came to see, I saw a sudden movement of security operatives. Shortly after, the President of the Republic of Ghana emerged from an elevator. With him was Chief Dele Momodu, a prominent Nigerian that had been my boss in my days at Concord Press of Nigeria in the late 1980s. I greeted the President. He responded warmly. I then greeted the eminent Nigerian as they prepared for a group photograph.
Guess what? President Mahama beckoned me to join the photo session. Till date, those photos remain the most cherished souvenirs I have ever collected since I got to Ghana in January 2014.
My third encounter with the President took place one Saturday in March 2016. Chief Julius Debrah had invited me to his farm in South-Eastern Ghana. We left Accra very early but the sun was blazing and burning our flesh furiously by the time we got to our destination. Still, every inch of the journey was fun. The convoy was short and silent. About six cars in all, without any siren blaring. There were no fierce-looking, gun-wielding security operatives either. Yet, they were there. Even the cars didn’t advertise anything. Nothing outlandish. Just regular cars. I never knew that one of them was carrying Ghana’s Number 1 citizen. Until we got to Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world, and we had to board a barge to cross to the other side.
That was when the cat was let out of the bag. Casually, President Mahama came out of his car and walked a few steps to the right side, perhaps to enjoy the scenery. There was an instant frenzy. People hailed and struggled for selfies. I shared in the photo feast. The crossing didn’t take long. Soon, we would be at the farm, and the real fun would begin. We ate, drank and danced under the same canopy with the President of Ghana. Going by the conviviality, a casual visitor who never knew Mahama would have mistaken the party for just another gathering of friends. It was that simple. Awed by Mahama’s simplicity, I soliloquised: if other leaders could just emulate this man’s humility, perhaps, Africa might be a paradise rediscovered.
FIXING THE ECONOMY
Though he came into government at a time that economies across the world were facing serious challenges, President Mahama has maintained a firm handle on Ghana’s economy, keeping it on track through well-articulated, home-grown programmes. He achieved that through fidelity to national budget, diversification of the economy, zero tolerance to corruption, and vast improvement on the value for the country’s exports.
Year 2012 was particularly challenging for the Ghanaian economy. It had serious overruns. Arrears accruing from the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure formulated between 2007 and 2008 were deferred to 2012 for payment. That same year, the economy began to gasp as a result of the slump in the prices of gold, cocoa and oil in the international market. The national currency, the Cedi, was also very unstable. It was dancing yoyo.
Depressing as the situation was, it brought out the best in President Mahama. He and his government approached the International Monetary Fund, IMF, for a bailout to fix the ailing economy. Many Ghanaians raised hell, believing the IMF facility was a key to Armageddon. But the President knew better. He saw the big picture. He was resolute. He pressed on. Not too long after, the IMF approved a US$918 million Extended Credit Facility covering a period of three years for Ghana.
Usually, when countries approach IMF for bail-outs, people often see such as key to further sufferings. Luckily, this has not been the case for Ghana under Mahama. Long term, the administration adopted an export-driven strategy to grow the economy. It took urgent steps to stabilise the Cedi, while discouraging dependence on imports, and boosting local production. Also, it tightened customs operations, tariff classification and valuation. With deft management and refocussing of the government’s transformation agenda, the economy began to rebound by mid-2015. And experts began to forecast sound health for it in the nearest future. Similarly, development partners started giving more funds in forex to the country, and with that, Ghana began issuing bonds in forex.
INFRASTRUCTURE
In the course of my job, I have travelled extensively across the country in the last three years, and I can attest to the yeoman job President Mahama and his team have been doing in terms of infrastructural development. The administration has been fixing roads not only in Accra, the nation’s capital, but also in the other regions. Like he promised last year, many urban roads in all the regional and district capitals have been asphalted and commissioned. Those yet to be commissioned are at advanced stages of completion.
THE KWAME NKRUMAH INTERCHANGE
My first visit to the Kwame Nkrumah Circle was in 2010. At the time, the sprawling area was a perfect symbolism of chaos; a textbook definition of disorder. Then, humans and vehicles jostled for space. Going by the disorder that ruled the place at the time, a first-time visitor would have thought all the demons in hell had been unleashed upon it. Tempers flared easily here. And valuable man hours were usually lost in the unending traffic snarl in the area. As a Lagosian visiting the area for the first time, I couldn’t help but liken the place to Oshodi, a chaotic suburb of Lagos, the former Nigerian capital, that, in the past, had rebuffed many government interventions to restore order. That was until a governor, named Babatunde Fashola, took office.
Like Oshodi, order is gradually returning to the Kwame Nkrumah Circle where work on the 74 million euros interchange project is coasting to completion. The interchange, with its loops of overhead bridges, are a beauty to behold. The aerial view is enthralling. President Mahama commissioned phase one of the project a little over a year ago, precisely August 7, 2015. The phase includes two interchanges linking the Akasanoma Road from the Nsawam Road and a second that links the Nsawam Road to the Nkrumah Avenue around the GCB Towers.
Other highlights of the project include the replacement of the statue of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, with a new one; the construction of a fountain; a police post; and an ultra-modern motor park. Already, the dividends of that huge investment on the interchange have started showing. The traffic gridlock that used to define the area has eased considerably, with concomitant effects on travel time and the local economy. Call that The Mahama Signature, and you would have hit the nail right on the head.
HEALTHCARE
Healthcare delivery is another area President Mahama has been dazzling Ghanaians. He has made giant strides in this sector, building functional hospitals and making healthcare affordable and available for the infirmed. Though I’m not on the NHIS, I have been receiving excellent treatment for a medical condition at the Ridge Hospital since March, this year, and I cannot ask for anything better. The doctors and nurses at the Ridge Hospital, like their counterparts in the other medical facilities across the country, are very professional and friendly. Laboratory services, where available, are affordable. Ditto drugs.
To me, the crowning glory of President Mahama’s efforts in Medicare is the construction of the 600-bed, state-of-the-art New Ghana Ridge Hospital in Accra, that is fast approaching completion. Designed by Perkins and Will, the 465,560 square foot (43,252 square meter) ultra-modern medical facility would be the second largest women and children’s hospital in Africa when completed. It would be preceded only by the Kenya Women and Children’s Wellness Centre in Nairobi.
The facility, according to Perkins and Will, in a release on its website, is equipped with more than 12 surgical theatres. And it would be “home to numerous hospital services like public health, accident and emergency, imaging, obstetrics, gynaecology, dental, surgical, intensive care, laboratory, respiratory therapy, and administration.” It would also “provide the modern infrastructure needed to create connections between Ghana and the broader, global medical community.”
Still that’s not all. Perkins and Will further revealed in the release that the New Ghana Ridge Hospital “will deliver modern healthcare facilities to women and children, and will become the largest hospital in the country. It will (also) allow a radiologist at Johns Hopkins Medical Centre to view information from Ghana and physicians can consult with each other across continents.”
RE-MODELLING OF KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
As a frequent traveller, I use the Kotoka International Airport, KIA, Accra, and the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, a lot. As a journalist familiar with developments in our two countries, I can authoritatively reveal that the re-modelling of the two airports commenced almost at the same time. But while Kotoka International Airport is ready and sparkling, fitted with brand new immigration cubicles and modern baggage carousels, Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, is still far from being completed, many millions of dollars after. That KIA was finished in record time attests to the fact that Ghana, under President Mahama, is working.
THE DEATH OF DUMSOR
The beginning of 2015 was the peak of dumsor (or doom sore) in Ghana. It was a situation of roiling light-outs in which the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG, came up with a rationing formula that, first, gave light for 24 hours, and without for 12 hours. The situation later worsened and the formula was reversed to 12 hours with light and 24 hours without. Ghanaians groaned. Businesses couldn’t breathe. Some of them collapsed. People abused daylight out of President Mahama. But he kept giving hope, assuring Ghanaians that he would fix the problem. And he did. Today, light is relatively stable in the country, except on the few occasions when Nigeria cut gas supply to Ghana on account of unsettled debts.
SECURITY
Having lived in Ghana for almost three years now, I can attest, matter-of-factly, that life in this country is not as short and brutish as you find in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Security is somewhat tight in Ghana. Crime and criminality are relatively low. Policing is effective. Patrol teams are everywhere. And because of the vast improvement in the power situation, many dark spots have disappeared. That is why I could leave my office in Awudome Estate, in Accra, as late as 12 midnight and still drive to my modest abode at Maajor, after the popular School Junction, without bothering about the possibility of a rascal wanting to stalk me. At home, I sleep with my two eyes firmly closed. Mahama’s Ghana is that safe, I tell you.
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental pillars of democracy. When allowed to thrive, it encourages popular participation in a country’s decision-making process and helps people to become politically and socially conscious. Without this fundamental right, without the people hearing plurality of opinions, citizens become like robots. They are reduced to automatons (apology Ma Jian).
One of the most visible evidences that democracy is in sound health under President Mahama, and which a first-time visitor to Ghana would easily notice, is the limitless liberty that many Ghanaian commentators and opinion leaders exhibit while discussing the administration’s policies.
When I assumed duty in Ghana as Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Sun Publishing Ghana Limited on January 3, 2014, I usually felt horrified listening to those prime-time morning discussion programmes on radio and television. Going by the tenor and intensity of discourse, and sometimes the vulgarity displayed by some commentators, you would think Ghana was at war. As a foreigner, you cannot help but wonder whether the person they were discussing was another John Mahama and not the President of the Republic of Ghana. To some discussants, no words were too caustic to describe the President’s actions.
Despite the President’s superlative performances so far, the hardliners have not tempered their language. Such abuses or vulgar criticisms usually peak when some unions or organisations or parties want to protest against an issue or action. But has President Mahama ever hit the roof over this? If he did, it never showed in his actions or utterances.
I recall one occasion when the President decided to respond to his critics while addressing the Ghanaian community in Botswana during an official visit to that country. Ghana had been rocked by a series of strikes and demonstrations. When asked about the actions and threats of strikes against his government, Mahama, a quintessential communicator, smiled and said he had become impervious to threats. In fact, he said he had adopted a “dead-goat syndrome.”
“I have seen more demonstrations and strikes in my first two years,” Mahama had declared at the forum. “I don’t think it can get worse. It is said that when you kill a goat and you frighten it with a knife, it doesn’t fear the knife because it is dead already. I have a dead goat syndrome.”
That was in March 2015.
Although the President used that expression as a metaphor, critics latched to it, and used it literally. They ceaselessly referred to him as a “Dead Goat”! But Mahama has never fallen through the trapdoor of depression, nor fly into a rage over that. Rather, when the opportunity came, he calmly modified the metaphor. While commenting on the strike called by the Ghana Medical Association, GMA, on Radio Ghana, last August, he said: “I am a living goat, not a dead-goat.”
Despite the modification and clarification, critics still continued with the “dead-goat syndrome”. Indeed, things got so bad at a point that the management of The Sun Publishing Ghana Limited resolved to publish an editorial imploring the President’s critics to respect the sanctity of the institution he represents and moderate their language. We even interviewed some prominent citizens on the matter. They, too, were irritated by the development. President Mahama had done well, the senior citizens had declared; and he deserved the admiration and appreciation of all Ghanaians.
Like I said, the President’s standard response to the venomous and often unjustified criticisms has been somewhat comic. He is apparently unfazed by them. Criticisms, no matter how harsh and unfair, don’t easily get under his skin. Indeed, he has proved, over and again, that he is not a thin-skinned leader. He is not a leader whose temper flares at the slightest provocation. That’s another attribute of good leadership. He is a perfect symbolism of a people-oriented leader who usually puts his country first. He also epitomises tolerance. In countries with intolerant governments, freedom of expression easily falls under the jackboots of despots who masquerade as democrats. Examples abound in Africa.
Even in Nigeria where people are still somewhat sympathetic to the incumbent government, secret service agents would have either visited or invited such vitriolic critics to their headquarters for ‘clarifications’. But it has never happened in Mahama’s Ghana. It can never happen under a committed democrat like Mahama. Temperamental and intolerant African leaders have a lot to learn from the President. Mahama never quarrels with critics. He believes quarrels are the weapons of the weak.
However, the good thing is that the population of Ghanaians who appreciate the sterling qualities and attributes of President Mahama as a high-performing servant-leader far outweighs his critics. From what I saw in my many tours across the country, people love the President. The grassroots, the real voters, are unflinching in their support for him. I’m confident they will reward him with second term, come December. They should because if a student performs brilliantly in a class, he must automatically gain promotion to a higher class.
MY TAKE
Ghana deserves and still needs Mahama. He is a statesman with unquestionable devotion and loyalty to Mother Ghana. He has excellent content of character and exudes a rare humanity that propels him to do good for the people at all times. As President, he is conscious of his duties to the country and he is ever alive to the huge responsibilities of his office. That’s why he never falters. That is why I present these recommendations of him, with infinite love, to Ghana. He will not disappoint. He will render greater service to Ghana. I vouch on my honour. Ghana, please, receive President John Dramani Mahama. Make him President again.
- Shola Oshunkeye, 2006 overall winner of the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Award, has been Editor of some national newspapers in Nigeria, his home country. He was, until July 20, 2016, the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Sun Publishing Ghana Limited. He is now the Chief Executive Officer of OMNIMEDIA Nigeria Limited, CEO at The Crest Publishing and Entertainment Company Limited, as well as Executive Director of a not-for-profit organization, Sustainable Development and Transparency Foundation, SDTF.
- Shola Oshunkeye wrote this article as a prologue to a special edition of OVATION INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE on the Mahama Presidency, prior to the 2016 general elections in Ghana.
- The article was also published in The Sun of Ghana.
