by Etse Sikanku
Nana Akuffo Addo, the veteran politician from Abuakwa whose lifelong ambition has been to become President of Ghana, recently rebuffed allegations over his use of cocaine.
"I have never sniffed or tasted cocaine in my life" he charged while addressing NPP’s youth wing in Tamale.
In the past, opponents within and outside his party made political hay out of what was now beginning to resemble an open secret. Perhaps Nana and his advisers desperate to avoid defeat in 2012 must have resolved to tackle this long standing accusation head on.
Whether this will carve out to be good political strategy or not remains to be seen. Already some of Ghana’s political cognoscenti posit it was unnecessary for Nana to thrust himself into the mud. For others however, Nana’s cocaine tag was a legitimate enough subject deserving serious attention.
The issue of drug trafficking has become a hot button issue in Ghana’s political corridors following high profile cases involving former Director of Police Operations, Kofi Boakye, Ashanti’s Manhyia palace and the infamous duo of Kwabena Amaning, a.k.a Tagoe and Alhaji Abass.
Akuffo Addo represents the greatest threat to any re-election bid by current President Mills. Mills himself is battling insiders within the NDC who are sabotaging his second term bid.
The cocaine topic will not go away easily as political figures such as Kofi Wayo have challenged Nana Addo to blood tests. However there are mixed signals as to whether this is serious enough to undermine Nana’s childhood ambition of following his late father who was once President of Ghana in the early 1970s.
So what exactly should Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo do? Go for the drug tests and risk culpability or just let sleeping dogs lie?
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