[ 2016-11-24 ]

No non-Akan should dream of leading the NPP – Haruna Attah REVEALS
There comes a time in a person’s life when as a
matter of conscience and fair play, he/she has to
take a stand. The time has come for me to take
just such a stand on an issue I had prayed and
hoped would not come to that.

President Mahama has recently been targeted by all
sorts of critics for allegedly making ethnocentric
comments in his campaign trip up North.

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), which
is usually measured in its approach to issues,
joined the litany this week with a a strangely
one-sided statement rudely entitled: “Prez
Mahama’s Comments: Ethnocentric, Divisive and
Condemnable”.

According to the MFWA, “…while campaigning in
the Upper West Region, the President of Ghana and
leader of the ruling National Democratic Congress
(NDC), His Excellency John Dramani Mahama opted to
use very ethnocentric and divisive campaign
language. The President, while addressing party
supporters in Lawra as part of his campaign tour
of the Region, made comments to suggest that the
New Patriotic Party (NPP) only “uses
northerners” to win power and “dump” them
afterwards.”

And if I may ask, what is wrong with that? The
President was only stating an obvious and
historical fact known to many people with a sound
knowledge of Ghana’s politics since
Independence.

My relationship with the late Vice President
Alhaji Aliu Mahama (May He Rest In Peace), just
like the one I have with President, John Dramani
Mahama, cannot be denied. I shared a lot of
private moments with the late Vice President and
he often poured his laments about the politics of
the system to me. It was a privilege I still
cherish. He was most gracious in allowing me to
also share my own insights with him. He is now
dead and gone and whatever he disclosed to me are
interred with his bones and my own living memory,
but one issue I once brought to his attention, I
feel I must now disclose to set the records
straight in the memory of this noble man and also
defend the name of another noble man, John Dramani
Mahama.

After the almost 20 presidential aspirants run
against him – as a sitting Vice President – in
the NPP primaries for the 2008 Elections, Alhaji
Aliu Mahama with much humility, conceded to Nana
Akufo-Addo who emerged winner, sort of…

I do recollect very clearly, as if it happened
only yesterday, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo
invited me to his office at Ridge near the offices
of the Electoral Commission. I honoured the
invitation, not knowing what to expect. The
outcome was one of the most revealing encounters I
have ever had with a Ghanaian politician. He
raised a number of issues and concluded on my
“support” for the late Vice President. On
that, this is what he told me. The words have been
indelibly etched on my conscience: “Harruna,
your support for Aliu was flawed. If you think our
party will cede its Akan leadership, you are
wrong.” He went on to expatiate on the theme,
but with my mind reeling at this blatant and
brazen ethnocentricity, nothing else really
mattered to me again. When I left, I confided in a
few people, mainly family and friends, as
witnesses. I received all manner of suggestions on
how to handle this “bombshell” and indeed one
family member high up in the NPP even suggested
that I take it up with President Kufuor. The
frightening fundamental message was clear: No
non-Akan should dream of leading the NPP as
Presidential Candidate.

Not only that, Mr. Hackman Owusu Agyeman, going
beyond Nana Akufo-Addo’s ethnicity, used
religion as his anti-Aliu stance. He confronted me
in the presence of a witness: “Abdul-Rahman,
with a nation of about 70% Christians, do you
think it will be fair to have a Muslim
President?” He was referring to Alhaji Aliu
Mahama, a Muslim. I answered calmly that in all
the major hotspots of the world, it is when some
groups think they are dominant and go on to
marginalize groups they regard as minorities that
the minorities also rise up to assert themselves,
by whatever means.

Dr. Addo-Kufuor, President Kufuor’s brother had
his turn too. At a funeral at the Trade Fair
Centre in Accra, he also railed against my
“support” for Aliu and threatened that “You
are working yourself out of reckoning in any
future NPP government.” I replied that history
would vindicate me. I could go on and on…

The late Vice President after he was dumped by the
NPP took it all with equanimity only occasionally
going through heart-breaking introspection.

NPP Presidential Candidate Nana Akufo-Addo’s
virulent opposition to an Aliu Presidency was so
intense that he once openly tongue lashed me at a
dinner party where the host had to come to my
defence and his daughter even asked me what I had
done to her father…Ironically she asked: “Are
you NDC?”

The “Akan leadership” of the NPP is something
the Party will have to confront one way or another
and hopefully the time would come when it can be
ceded, but clearly not now. Nana Akufo-Addo is one
of the architects of that doctrine and he is in
charge.

These are very delicate times, so the MFWA and
others that are jumping into issues without
adequate historical perspectives must be even more
circumspect about things they publish, than the
people they seek to condemn. They must know that
their ignorance or perhaps arrogance could be more
harmful to our polity than the truth and honesty
of those that would hold up the mirror to reflect
the reality. President Mahama was only reflecting
that reality. It was neither hate speech nor
divisive. It was the painful (to those whom the
cap fits) truth…

The MFWA, I believe would, in light of the
foregoing, use its vast resources to research more
into ethnicity in Ghana so as to play the honest
arbiter and perhaps also find in its professional
heart some room to apologize to President Mahama.

Haruna Attah is Ghana’s Ambassador to Nambia and
Botswana

Source - Haruna Atta

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