It is yet unclear why Akufo-Addo decided to severe diplomatic relations with Western Sahara in favour of the illegal occupation of parts of that country by monarchical Morocco. There are two possible reasons I can discern: either he acted at the behest of his Western masters, or due to the largess Morocco is sharing amongst African countries. Who knows, given his retirement, Akufo-Addo may be enticed by Morocco’s subversive generosity.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo’s last day in office was 6 January. His country’s economy had crumbled at his feet. Even when newly sworn-in President John Dramani Mahama had not been adjudged an effective leader, Ghanaians see him as a sort of saviour. For them, anybody or group but Akufo-Addo and his cronies, was good enough for Ghana.
In a valedictory speech in parliament to signal the end of Akufo-Addo’s disastrous tenure, a parliamentarian, after cataloguing some of the woes Ghanaians went through under him, told the disgraced President: “It is finished!” So the parliamentarian thought. He did not suspect that for the larger African people, Akufo-Addo had a parting shot to deliver on behalf of his Western ‘partners,’ who virtually ran Ghana with him as a figure-head and a spy.
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In 2022, on the sidelines of the US-African Leaders Summit, Akufo-Addo snitched on neighbouring Burkina Faso to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. He reported that Burkina Faso and Mali had brought in the Russian Wagner mercenary forces to fight Islamic terrorists. He informed Blinken that the Burkinabe Prime Minister had been in Moscow for ten days and that a mine has been given to the Russians as payment. He further said that he was uncomfortable with the Russian presence in a neighbouring country, because Ghana supports Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
I found it demeaning that an African President would stoop so low as to openly act as spy for a foreign country. Secondly, that an African Head of State would be reporting not to a fellow President or Vice President, but to the Foreign Minister of another country. Thirdly, I am not sure Akufo-Addo knew he was being filmed or that the video would be leaked.
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It was quite tragic that rather than dialogue with his brothers across the border, the Ghanaian President flew all the way to Washington to report to foreigners. This is also despite the fact that Burkina Faso and Ghana have the same Mossi nationality on both sides of their colonial borders. Akufo-Addo claimed that all he was doing was to bring the issue of Russian presence in the region to the notice of the US. But was he so daft as to think that the Americans were unaware that the Burkinabes expelled the French and invited the Russians?
The Akufo-Addo culture of betraying the African dream and selling Ghana for cheap is a family tradition. His father, Edward Akufo-Addo, and his uncle, Joseph William Ofori-Attah, were part of the Group of Four Ghanaian elites who facilitated the 24 February, 1966 American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coup against the principled Pan Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah. After that coup, the senior Akufo-Addo became the Attorney General of the new military junta. Four years into the coup, he was appointed President of Ghana.
Perhaps the most nauseating part of the report was Akufo-Addo claiming that his country’s concern was that it did not want the military of the big powers to operate in West Africa. He made this claim while being conscious that his government had permitted the US to operate a military base in Ghana.
Akufo-Addo is like a sex worker who shouts in public that she is a virgin and insists her customers accept this as the truth. Even after allowing the US military base, he told a blatant lie in April 2018 that Ghana had not offered and will not offer a military base to the US. A lawyer who is clever by half, he assumed that the African people are stupid; that since the US military base in Ghana has been baptised as the West African Logistics Network (WALN), it meant that the base did not exist.
When opposition parliamentarian, Brogya Genfi, sued the government for eroding the country’s sovereignty by agreeing to the slavish Ghana-US Military Base Agreement, the Ghanaian Supreme Court on Tuesday, 5 May, 2020 ruled that the suit was unmeritorious.
When on 12 August, 2022, I wrote against the US Military Base in Ghana in my column titled: “How Ghana surrendered its independence to the US”, I got protest phone calls from the Ghana High Commission in Abuja. The embassy claimed I was unfair to President Akufo-Addo and that I had misrepresented facts. I was invited to a meeting on Monday, 15 August, 2022 with the High Commissioner in his office on Diplomatic Drive, Abuja. I agreed to the meeting but insisted the venue should be a public place like an hotel lobby. The High Commission picked Rockview Hotel, Wuse II, Abuja. The High Commissioner sent a representative to the meeting who tried to put the blame for the US Military Base on the previous administration. I pointed out that the parliament that approved the base was not under the past government and that in any case, if it is true that the Akufo-Addo government was opposed to the base, what has it done for the over four years it has been in power to repeal the Agreement, more so when it provides that it can be terminated by a one-year written notice by either side. The Ghanaian diplomat rambled and called for a second meeting which expectedly, never took place.
The Akufo-Addo culture of betraying the African dream and selling Ghana for cheap is a family tradition. His father, Edward Akufo-Addo, and his uncle, Joseph William Ofori-Attah, were part of the Group of Four Ghanaian elites who facilitated the 24 February, 1966 American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coup against the principled Pan Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah. After that coup, the senior Akufo-Addo became the Attorney General of the new military junta. Four years into the coup, he was appointed President of Ghana.
We Africans in our tens of millions expect President Mahama to reverse this Akufo-Addo attempt to disunite our continent. We expect him to be on the same page as African leaders like Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa who, in a joint communiqué on 3 December, 2024, reiterated their unwavering support for the inalienable right of our Saharawi brothers and sisters to freedom, self-determination and justice.
When 50 years later, Akufo-Addo, like his father, became President of Ghana, I knew the country was heading for disaster. Hence, I titled my 16 December, 2016 column, “Ghana: An African Dream Deferred.”
This Monday, the eve of his departure as Ghanaian President, Akufo-Addo tried to defer another African dream by purportedly suspending diplomatic relations with the sister African country, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), better known as Western Sahara.
It is yet unclear why Akufo-Addo decided to severe diplomatic relations with Western Sahara in favour of the illegal occupation of parts of that country by monarchical Morocco. There are two possible reasons I can discern: either he acted at the behest of his Western masters, or due to the largess Morocco is sharing amongst African countries. Who knows, given his retirement, Akufo-Addo may be enticed by Morocco’s subversive generosity.
We Africans in our tens of millions expect President Mahama to reverse this Akufo-Addo attempt to disunite our continent. We expect him to be on the same page as African leaders like Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa who, in a joint communiqué on 3 December, 2024, reiterated their unwavering support for the inalienable right of our Saharawi brothers and sisters to freedom, self-determination and justice.
This is in accordance with the 16 October, 1975 decision of the International Court of Justice, the rulings of European Court of Justice, ECJ and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and, the Charters of the African Union and the United Nations.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
