Prof Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba
Pan-Africanist Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba has said he is disappointed with President Nana Akufo-Addo’s governance since, according to him, there is a mismatch between the Ghanaian leader’s rhetoric and actions.
In an interview with Maxwell Nkansah, the Director of the Kenya Anti-corruption Commission said the man he once held in high esteem had disappointed him.
“The problem with a number of leaders is that if you see good in them too soon, they disappoint you very quickly, and there is a sense in which I’m beginning to feel disappointed by President Akufo-Addo”, Prof Lumumba, who is also the Director of the Kenya School of Law, said.
“He [Nana Akufo-Addo] started very well”, Prof Lumumba acknowledged, explaining: “He had sound ideas”.
“He had ideas talking about industrialisation in every district he said he would perform and look at Ghana beyond aid”, Prof Lumumba enumerated.
He, however, observed: “The rhetoric was right, but now, as I watch him consistently, I’m beginning to see a mismatch between rhetoric and action, and I’m seeing the widening of the gulf between action and rhetoric”.
Citing an instance to buttress his judgement, Prof Lumumba said: “When I see members of parliament going to parliament and saying the president’s wife should have an allowance, then I know that the man, whom I thought had great ideas, is now down a slippery slope”.
“That is my unfortunate verdict as I speak now, and if I had any doubt in my mind, the young men and women who are now rising up in the streets of Accra are saying with me: ‘Nana, we thought you’re on the right path, but you have now taken an about-turn, and you are moving with jet-like speed in the direction that we don’t want you to move in”, Prof Lumumba noted.
It is “sad”, he confessed, “for me to say this for a man, who, in terms of intellectual firepower, he has it, but oh, how I wish he could say with Paul of the Bible: ‘The thing that I hated I hate them no more; the things that I love, I love them no more”.
“How I wish Nana could do that in the next four years that we may speak fondly of him, but for the moment, I feel disappointed”, Prof Lumumba reiterated.