Akufo-Addo’s Credibility Crisis. It is a Capacity Challenge

There is not doubt that President Akufo-Addo’s main challenge in this 2020 campaign is his credibility. He has acknowledged this by focusing his campaign message on credibility. 

For months, throughout the traditional and social media the outings of Mr Akufo-Addo have not been reported without his pleadings to the general public about why he should be trusted. But it appears the more he tries the further he gets mired in evidences of his lack of the capacity to deliver credible leadership. 

Many would wonder why public trust in the President has waned so much as to force him to discard his party’s manifesto promises and focus his campaign message on image rehabilitation. Yet, a vast majority of Ghanaians would not struggle to tell why.

Even amongst those who are in utter wonderment, a few would appreciate that it is the failure of the President to come to terms with his character and conceptual shortfalls which explains his inexorable reputation as untrustworthy.

Only a week ago, hours after some voters gathered at a rally in the Ashanti Region described Mr Akufo-Addo as “a liar”, the demise of Rawlings offered him a rare opportunity to endear himself to the hearts of the public. He seized it with both hands and got to work. He staged two meetings with the bereaved family, issued two Presidential statements and effectively attempted to gag the campaign activities of the opposition with a 7-day mourning period. 
He must have had a fresh sigh of relief that, alas the freeway to coasting to electoral dominance had come by way of the shocking death of President Rawlings

Little did Mr Akufo-Addo know that the Rawlings death which gave him that PR opportunity had also jolted Martin Alamisi Benz Kaiser Amidu, the then Special Prosecutor, into becoming suspicious of the circumstances of the demise, a situation which led to him tendering his resignation at speed in preparation for the worse which he claimed was threatened against his person by loyalists of Mr Akufo-Addo. 

Mr Amidu has, by his resignation letter, not failed to nail the President’s credibility coffin. He has, in fact, forced the public to now know what they had not known earlier, that the president was busy interfering with the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s work, by impeding it, in order to aid family corruption in his government.

Now, president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is back into the fray of public distrust, with no breath of survival left to clutch on to, fighting his own credibility demons, three weeks to election day.

Indeed the allegations made by Mr Amidu portray a man who knows only one thing to do with power; to be duplicitous, to promise one thing whiles practicing the perverse obverse with dogged persistence.

That the persistence with which the President’s conduct in office destroys his credibility rages should no more be a matter for wonder to any Ghanaian. It is a feature of his being. It is a part of his formation. It reflects his lack of awareness of his own incapacity and his failure to accept that he has not what it takes to lead at that level. 

Even as a new corruption scandal involving a bold theft of 57 million Cedis by another appointee of Mr Akufo-Addo at the National Lottery Authority brews on the screens of Joy News, there are many citizens who are now resigned to the reality that Ghana, our beloved country has a President who does not know that he does not know how to govern.
Kofi Adoli