Breaking the 8 Will Break Ghana: Why you shouldn’t vote for Bawumia
Ideally, when a sitting vice president decides to shoot their shot at the top job, it shouldn’t feel like they’re auditioning to be a gymnast — twisting, flipping, and contorting themselves mentally on their way up. Sure, there might be some unpopular policies to sidestep (without offending the president, the government, or their party’s track record). But it shouldn’t be this hard. Yet here we are, watching our vice president, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, literally performing a parkour to sell himself as the man for the job.
One day, he’s the humble mate of the metaphorical trotro bus, claiming he’s merely assisting the driver (and thus, not responsible for the government’s failings — which, trust me, we’ll get to soon). Next, he’s proudly sitting in the driver’s seat, demanding applause for things like getting the NHIS to cover dialysis treatment a few weeks before the 2024 elections.
To be fair, having worked in Ghana and seen how power relations work across sectors, I know that titles do not always translate to control. In many cases, the real power lies with the boss and his inner circle. Let’s take President Akufo-Addo for example, the man once appointed a PRO for a public agency. If a president micromanages down to this level, I don’t see how he is going to let his veep steer the ship. I also remember when President Akufo-Addo told a community their issues weren’t addressed because they didn’t vote for his party’s MP candidate.
Any leader capable of such a thoughtless comment is unlikely to let a deputy take the reins on major decisions. So, when Bawumia insists he wasn’t pulling the economic levers despite being part of the “economic management team,” he’s not entirely wrong. After all, didn’t his flagship digitization program get undermined w? A government genuinely invested in Bawumia’s vision would have considered the implications of the tax on his efforts to establish a digital economy. So yes, I’ll give him this one. He’s been the mate, not the driver.
Of course, being the mate doesn’t disqualify you from one day becoming the driver. Many mates eventually take the wheel, and some do it spectacularly well. In Bawumia’s case, though, the problem isn’t that he lacks the potential to drive.
The problem is that Akufo-Addo’s “driving style” has left the bus sputtering, and staying on board is no longer the safest option. After all, if the driver is this bad, what hope do we have for the mate he couldn’t even bother to train properly? Under the Akufo-Addo administration, of which Bawumia has been an integral part, Ghana is facing its worst economic crisis yet. The country has defaulted on its sovereign debt, triggering hyperinflation and those dreaded “haircuts” on investments. Ghanaians who entrusted their savings to government bonds have seen their returns slashed (after numerous promises by the president that there would be no haircuts). The crisis has plunged over 800,000 Ghanaians into poverty in 2022. Even if we accept their argument that this crisis is due to external forces, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, the government’s own failings are impossible to ignore.
Take Akufo-Addo’s promise to make Accra the cleanest city in Africa. Instead of becoming a beacon of cleanliness, the city remains buried in filth. Not just the capital, but most of the country is buried under tons of waste. Then, there was his pledge to stake his presidency on ending galamsey (illegal mining), which has ravaged Ghana’s forests and poisoned its water bodies. Yet, large swaths of forests and farmlands are still disappearing while water bodies, sources of drinking water, still run brown with pollution.
The president’s vow to “protect the public purse” also rings hollow when you consider some of the jaw-dropping financial scandals under his watch. One glaring example is the Frontiers Healthcare contract with the Ghana Airports Company where Ghana received a meagre $6.4 million while Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited walked away with a staggering $80.6 million. Then there’s the Cecilia Dapaah case where a public official was found to have stashed millions in her home, yet it was the Special Prosecutor who faced harassment for attempting to investigate her.
Time and space won’t allow me to catalogue the breadth of corruption, shady deals, outright self-dealing, incompetence, disrespect and bad behaviour that have flourished under Akufo-Addo’s administration. From wasting millions on the national cathedral and erecting a golden statue of himself while the economy wobbles, to demanding that chiefs stand to greet him, to outright ignoring the detention of unarmed protesters calling for an end to galamsey, this has been a masterclass in hubris. And then there is the incompetence.
Our public schools remain in a state of disrepair, our hospitals are overburdened and underfunded, and our roads are crumbling. Things are so bad that coming across functioning traffic lights and clear road markings now feels like a luxury. This is from a president who appointed over 100 ministers in the name of transformation. Even electricity, a problem we believe was solved, has become unreliable. We had to rage online and offline to get the government to clear drugs and vaccines donated to the country by the Global Fund from the port.
I know from Ghana's history that we’ve faced dark days before. Things aren’t as catastrophic as they were between 1969 and the 1980s, but if there’s been a period since our return to constitutional rule where the country has regressed beyond recognition, it’s this period under Under Akufo-Addo. All of which brings me back to Dr. Bawumia’s plea for trust.
The problem isn’t Dr. Bawumia’s competence or capacity to lead; it’s what his candidacy represents. A vote for him in this context is akin to saying, “We loved Akufo-Addo’s reign! Encore!” For me, whether or not Dr Bawumia could steer Ghana in a different direction besides the point. The mere prospect of any iteration of this government continuing is terrifying and fills me with dread for Ghana’s future.
Here’s the thing: If Dr. Bawumia wasn’t running on the back of such an awful legacy, and at such a challenging time in our history, his candidacy would have been a significant positive. As a Muslim man from northern Ghana, his presence on the ticket could have been a powerful symbol of religious pluralism and a step forward in deepening our democracy. But symbolism isn’t enough, Ghanaian Muslims are suffering too.
I can hear a loyal NPP supporter ask, “Whom should I vote for, then?” Or perhaps someone who lived under John Mahama’s administration might ask, “Isn’t voting for JDM just a return to the same issues you’re complaining about?” To NPP supporters I say this: If you truly believe in your party’s vision, take a hard look at where Akufo-Addo has landed us now. Has Dr. Bawumia offered any clear plans to change how we live, work, or play in Ghana? This is a man who has proposed paying chiefs, giving more perks to religious institutions, and floating other juvenile ideas—all in a broke country. Broke, as in, too broke for silly, populist schemes.
Besides, the NPP, the party you love now has an Akufo-Addo problem. Not only does he dominate it fully but he has filled its ranks with people most of you wouldn’t send on errands, let alone run a government. Many of these people owe their positions not to competence or vision but to their loyalty to Akufo-Addo. Your party has been hijacked by opportunists and sycophants who are slowly wrecking it. If you truly care about Ghana and your party, you need to vote against Bawumia. Yes, I’m saying you should hold your nose and vote for John Mahama. And no, I don’t say this lightly. I remember the Mahama presidency very well. The economic challenges, the corruption scandals (hello, GYEEDA and SADA), the filthy towns and cities, the endless flooding of Accra despite numerous promises to clean the Odaw River, and the silly decision to airlift money to Brazil. John Mahama wasn’t great.
But for all his faults, John Mahama never condescended to Ghanaians. He didn’t check out while the country burned. He wasn’t obsessed with statues or perks or silencing critics. Say what you will about the “dead goat” comment, but at least he showed up. And in a political landscape as broken as ours, even that low bar is preferable to what we have now. So no, I’m not reassured that Mahama wouldn’t revert to old settings of misgovernance, corruption, or neglect. But faced with the terrifying prospect of continuity under Bawumia, I’d rather gamble on a leader who has experienced deep criticism and has, if nothing else, proven that he’s willing to take a beating and keep going.
Sometimes, when the bar is this low, showing up really is half the battle. And let’s be honest, the fact that John Mahama is even our most viable option now is a damning indictment of Akufo-Addo’s leadership. If he, Akufo-Addo had delivered on the sweeping mandate Ghanaians entrusted him with on December 7, 2016, John Mahama—who was trounced in that election wouldn’t dare put his face on a campaign poster today.
When Ghanaians voted Mahama out in that landslide victory for Akufo-Addo, we weren’t just saying, “Enough is enough.” We were trying to set a new, higher standard for governance. We believed we could demand better and that Akufo-Addo was the man to deliver it. But as Akufo-Addo has painfully demonstrated, voting a party into power is only one part of our civic responsibility.
To truly hold our leaders accountable and ensure they serve the people, we need to consistently demand transparency, integrity, and performance throughout their time in office. Unfortunately, we’ve fallen short on this front, and Ghanaian politicians have continued to operate without the healthy fear of the electorate that democracy requires.
Thankfully, December 7, 2024, offers us a chance to revisit the promise we made to ourselves in 2016. By voting against Akufo-Addo’s legacy—by rejecting Dr Bawumia’s candidacy—we can take another step toward raising the bar for governance in Ghana.
This isn’t just about elections; it’s about reminding every politician that their seat isn’t a throne but a responsibility, one they can lose if they fail us. And voting for John Mahama might be the only way to ensure accountability for the staggering corruption, destruction, and theft that have defined Akufo-Addo’s administration. Without this, we risk undermining the very foundation of electoral accountability that sustains Ghanaian democracy.
-
Source: Nana Ama Agyemang Asante
The writer is a Ghanaian journalist and a writer.
Email: [email protected]
