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Do Ghanaians not already
know President Mahama?
By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Friday, December 25, 2015
Folks, the rebranding of 116 MMT buses and its sequel of
ridiculous developments has engaged our attention for some
time now. There are still some loose ends to tie up.
Those who want to do other things with the scandal are up on
their feet. One of them is Vitus Azeem, the Executive
Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), who has
called for the removal of the photos of President Mahama
from the 116 Metro Mass Transit (MMT) because “putting the
photos of President Mahama on the buses especially as Ghana
enters an election year in 2016 amounts to abuse of
incumbency since it will give him an advantage to market
himself to the detriment of the other presidential
candidates”. He said that the photos of the former
Presidents could, however, be maintained. (See
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Remove-Mahama-photos-from-buses-GII-403192).
An immediate question: Do the former Presidents not belong
to known specific political camps and draw public support to
their cause, which matters much because whether they have
left office or not, they still wield a clout? Or are they
not already known to the Ghanaian citizenry to not warrant
their being projected on nothing but buses? Why not ask that
no image of anybody be used? Or that the space should be
used for advertising anything else Ghanaian (probably, the
flora and fauna)?
Who will be contracted to remove President Mahama’s image
and how will that person be paid? Certainly, the job cannot
be done gratis!!
This call by Azeem also raises some hypothetical issues:
What would all these critics have been saying had the
contract for rebranding the buses been given to an NPP
member and not Selassie Ibrahim, a so-called NDC member?
It also raises some more serious issues:
1. How come that the contract was awarded to Selassie
Ibrahim? Was the project advertised for bidding? Or did the
former Minister just use her authority to award it to
Selassie Ibrahim? Why?
2. How come that no one heard anything about the project
until it was completed and the matter laid before Parliament
before being exposed? Was the rebranding exercise done in a
closet hidden from public view? I assume that it was done in
a timeframe that could have been known by people seeing what
was happening to the buses. How come that nobody said
anything about the exercise all that while?
As I have kept saying, our kind of democracy is not designed
to solve problems but to either compound them or create new
ones to add to them. If the former Minister could act
unilaterally to that extent, especially when public funds
were involved in the rebranding exercise, no one needs any
divination to know how pestilential our democracy is. Where
did the money come from to pay for the contract? From the
coffers (budgetary allocation) of the Ministry of
Transportation itself? Could it be a clear case of
misappropriation of funds? Or what else?
Now to the principle behind the rebranding exercise itself.
From the images plastered on the buses, I am tempted to
think that the idea was to project the leaders that we’ve
had in this Fourth Republic, which is why the faces of
Rawlings, Kufuor, Mills, and Mahama are plastered on the
buses. Why the projection of these leaders, anyway? Is the
rebranding, then, being used to immortalize them? For what?
And why do so on buses? Very weird!!
Turning to another aspect, we can see why the GII is asking
that President Mahama’s image be expunged. Could there be a
hidden agenda behind the rebranding exercise to make
President Mahama more visible to the people in areas plied
by these buses as part of the electioneering campaign
efforts? From the GII’s concern, we may be tempted to draw
that conclusion. But, then, an intriguing aspect surfaces.
Who in Ghana doesn’t already know President Mahama? Is it
the pasting of his image on buses that will make him known
to the people? And does knowing him as such automatically
fetch him any political capital?
Folks, you see, there is a lot of misconception and
misperception going on here, especially if we consider how
the GII is twisting the matter to create the mistaken
impression that projecting President Mahama’s image on the
buses is an abuse of incumbency. What is the guarantee that
projecting his image this way will give him a head-start
advantage over the other politicians? Haven’t the NPP people
claimed that Akufo-Addo is the most popular Ghanaian
politician in our time? What is their worry now?
On the flip side, can it not be that the mere projection of
President Mahama’s image on the buses will have a negative
impact on those to whom he is a “curse” and for which they
will not want to have anything to do with him no matter how
the image dares them? Or that once they don’t like him as
their leader, no amount of projection of his face on buses
will change their stance? If then, what is there to fear
about abuse of incumbency through this rebranding exercise?
Do Ghanaians not already know President Mahama, having seen
images of him all over the place? What is new here, except
that his image as used in the rebranding exercise is on MMT
buses and not billboards, newspapers, TV screens,
pamphlets—just anything?
More importantly, is there any credible information to
indicate that President Mahama was consulted about the
project and that he consented that his image be included?
How does abuse of incumbency come in, then? Of course, he is
our current leader; but does the use of his image
necessarily drag him into the fracas?
And how about the portrait of President Mahama hanging in
the offices of public institutions? Will one ask that it be
removed because it constitutes an abuse of incumbency? (So
far, only the NPP’s Kwabena Agyepong is on record as having
asked that the portrait of Akufo-Addo hanging in his office
be torn down. That is between him and his own God as to why
he won’t want to see Akufo-Addo’s face bearing down on him
in his office!!).
Beyond this level, if we want to be fair to ourselves as far
as the obvious scope of the rebranding is concerned, we will
not expect to see the image of just anybody (including the
political opponents of President Mahama) on the buses; that
is, if the rationale behind the rebranding is to project
leaders of the Fourth Republic. In truth, the flagbearers of
the opposition parties don’t qualify to be so projected
because they haven’t ruled Ghana in this Fourth Republic. No
one will expect Akufo-Addo’s face, for instance, to show up
among those of the Heads of State.
Folks, we have already analyzed the rebranding exercise and
condemned it as a waste of public funds. The sector Minister
has resigned in consequence. We wish that the matter will be
fully investigated so she is taken to task if found to have
misappropriated public funds or if other instances not yet
exposed prove that she has done worse than the rebranding
exercise in the handling of public funds. If found culpable,
she should be prosecuted and dealt with to serve as a
deterrent to others deceiving themselves that they can do
things anyhow and get away with it. No decent democracy will
encourage this kind of flippant behaviour. That is what we
must fight for.
It is good that the citizens fight for commonsense and
decency to prevail in the use of public funds; but when
matters get over-extended to create unfortunate impressions,
questions must be asked those leading the campaign. Where
was Vitus Azeem when Kufuor caused Ghana’s Cedi to be
redenominated by a team led by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia (who was
then the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana and now
leading the NPP’s pack of wolf-criers against anything done
by the Mahama-led administration) without telling Ghanaians
the cost of that exercise? In any case, what has Ghana’s
economy benefited from the slicing off of zeros from the
figurative representation of the Cedi? Selective amnesia at
work for political mischief? Too dangerous for our
democracy, folks!!
I shall return…
• E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com
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