President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has recounted what he had to endure before becoming President of the Republic of Ghana.
He said his struggles to become president have been testimonies of God’s love.
Delivering the Inaugural Africa lecture by the Museum of the Bible in Washington, USA, President Akufo-Addo said, the story of “my struggles to become president of my country are well known.
My experiences have been a testimony of God’s love, and a vindication of the words of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, chapter 19 verse 26, which says “with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible”.
He added
“it took three tries between 2008 and 2016 for me to get elected. By which time, the popular catch phrases of “Akufo-Addo cannot be President”, “God does not want Akufo-Addo to be President”, “Akufo-Addo is short, and does not have the stature to be President” had become so prevalent, you had to be firmly rooted in your faith to have had the courage to persist.
“I committed that third election campaign to God, and indicated to the Ghanaian people that “The Battle is the Lord’s”. By God’s grace, I won a famous victory against an incumbent President by a gap of nearly a million votes, the largest margin of victory for two decades. And, by the same Grace, I won re-election in the December 2020 elections, and I am now in my
second and last term as President”.
He also highlighted his religious background.
“My own parents, as you can imagine, were staunch Presbyterians. I was baptised a Presbyterian, and became an Anglican, much to the vehement protests of my parents, as a result of the secondary school I attended in England. Let us say I became enamored with the rituals, daily Matins and Evensong, and the additional Sunday Eucharist, which were constant features of my four-year stay at school in Lancing”, he said.
“Often in law practice, things are not quite as cut and dried as they would seem or as one would wish. There would be times when no amount of experience or intellectual rigour would prepare you for the vicissitudes of the legal playground. On such occasions, it helps to be able to hark back to your faith and maybe the sound of your mother singing that ancient hymn: Who is on the Lord’s side? It helps to be on the Lord’s side, when you purport to seek or arbitrate for justice among humans.”
