[ 2016-08-26 ]

Mahama ‘intoxicated with truth’ about Nana Addo – Anyidoho
Deputy General Secretary of the National
Democratic Congress (NDC) Koku Anyidoho, has
countered the opposition New Patriotic Party’s
suggestion that President John Dramani Mahama was
intoxicated while criticising their flagbearer
Nana Akufo Addo.

Speaking at Bimbilla on his four-day campaign tour
of the Northern region, President Mahama had said
that Nana Addo was a divisive figure who was
leading “only half of the party” and that
“the other half are sitting with their hands
folded watching him drive the bus down.

The NPP hit back at the President on Thursday,
with the party’s acting General Secretary, John
Boadu stating that the President might have been
‘under the influence’ and ‘possessed’ when
he made those comments.

“…after destroying the legacy the late
president John Evans Atta Mills left him in 2012
and watching helplessly, power slipping through
his reckless, incompetent, corrupt and insensitive
hands, President Mahama is now showing his true
colours. Rather than addressing the myriad of
problems the country is facing, he has reduced his
bid for re-election, to a manifesto of lies and
insults against Nana Akufo Addo. The president is
talking as if he is possessed. He is using words
as if he is seeing things as double,” John
Boadu, NPP acting General Secretary said.

However, according to Koku Anyidoho, President
Mahama was ‘intoxicated with the truth’ when
he accused Nana Addo of being a dictator. “He
[Mahama] was under the influence of the truth and
the facts as pertains within the NPP and to every
discerning Ghanaian. It could have been nothing
else but the truth,” he said on Eyewitness
News.

“Intoxication does not necessarily mean that you
must be high on cocaine or wee. You can be high on
the truth and facts. Others choose to get
intoxicated on cocaine and other hard substances.
I believe the president was intoxicated with the
truth and the facts.

” President’s sleeping comment was figurative

The two leading parties have clashed several
times in recent days on several issues during
their campaigns

Nana Addo had bemoaned the state of roads in the
region during his five-day tour of the Western
Region, criticizing the government for failing to
honour its promise to fix the roads.

President Mahama, who toured the region days
after, hit back at Nana Addo, stating that the NPP
flagbearer must have been sleeping to have missed
the good work done by the government on the
roads.


The NPP, who took offence, described the comments
as unpresidential while the party’s flagbearer
said that “did not see the roads he [President
Mahama] constructed. It was the same poor muddy
roads I used in the region. I was wondering what
roads he was talking about.”

However, Koku Anyidoho has sought to clarify the
President’s comments, explaining that they had
been meant to be taken figuratively.

He believes the NPP’s literal understanding of
President Mahama’s words had created an
unnecessary fuss.

“Since when did we start bastardising the use of
idiomatic expressions and the use of figures of
speech in our language. It’s figures of speech
and idiomatic expressions that colour our
language. If you say the person was asleep, it’s
figurative, it means the person was not paying
attention. If you take it literally, that’s you
own base understanding of the English Language. If
someone is sleeping on duty, or sleeping behind
the console, it doesn’t mean you are snoring, it
just means that you are not paying attention to
detail,” he said.

“Nana Addo obviously didn’t pay attention to
detail when he travelled on that road because
it’s one of the best in the Western Region so it
you say it’s in a bad shape obviously,
figuratively, he must have been sleeping on the
road”

Source - citifmonline.com

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