In our traditions, the elders say that when a calabash has done its work, you lift it gently and bless it for the journey it has made. President Mahama has so far served Ghana with the calmness of a river that refuses to overflow its banks, even in stormy seasons. His temperament is right for leadership, but the path he has walked cannot be walked a third time under our constitution. This is truth, not sentiment. And truth does not change because some people want to protect their own shadows.
Those urging him to break the pot and fetch water a third time are not doing it for Ghana. They are doing it for themselves.
Look around and you will see it clearly.
A Plus entered Parliament like a young warrior returning from battle with songs following him. But today, the drum is quiet. His fire has faded into the everyday compromises of our false republic. And so, in panic, he wraps himself in Mahama’s name, pretending frustration as show of loyalty, hoping the base will notice him and save his seat. But the ancestors taught us that a hunter who leans on another man’s spear will one day face the lion alone. If he does not join the NDC by 2028, that seat will slip between his fingers like sand.
Then there is Kojo Adu Asare. A good man. A man who has tasted the bitterness of being forgotten. In his call for a Mahama third term, you can hear a deeper cry: “I am still here. Do you see me? Anything for the boys?” He has reached that dangerous place where a person says, “If good means nothing then bad also means nothing.” It is the valley where exhausted men stop believing that virtue has value. The other day I met an old friend reading 48 Laws of Power by the pool. I knew instantly he had reached that same valley. He said he was tired. Done. Ready to go and chop. This is where our politics leaves too many of our people.
But Ghana cannot be governed from a place of exhaustion and self pity. The throne of leadership is not a stool for abandoned ambitions to sit and heal themselves. And i say this plainly, those pushing Mahama for a third term are bootlickers. They are not serving Ghana. They are serving their own hunger.
And hunger has never built a nation.
We honour Mahama best not by dragging him into a fight the constitution forbids, but by protecting his legacy from those who want to use his name as a stepping stone.
The Akans say, “When the path is clear, the wise do not walk in circles.”
The path is clear.
Ghana must look forward.
Not sideways.
Not backwards.
Forward.
Ernesto Yebaoh is the Leader and Founder of the Economic Fighters League, a generational movement for the economic freedom of Africans.
