by Azubuike Ishiekwene

When Victoria Hammah went to bed last Thursday night, she was one of the most influential women in Ghana. Vicky, as she is fondly called, was the deputy communications minister in the government of John Dramani Mahama. But her clout was not in her position. She contested to represent the Central Region in parliament last year and lost. But that was not the test of her strength. She had powers beyond the ballot box.

Vicky is a 33-year-old heart-stopper, pretty as the devil, smart as a cat and connected as a widget. She knows all the right people and keeps her hand on all the right buttons. That is her secret weapon. A friend and a major publisher in Ghana described Vicky, who is from the Fante area, as “a woman who is richly endowed”.

The deployment of her asset landed her in trouble by the time she woke up on Friday morning. She had been fired from a job that fed her pride and ego. On a recent trip with an unnamed female friend, Vicky had, among other things, boasted about her connections. She piled on a fellow cabinet colleague, a deputy minister whom she described as “senseless, ugly, loud and egoistic”. She hammered her colleague for “growing wings”, and accused her of not staying in her place.

She didn’t stop there. Since Vicky fancied herself as a kitchen-cabinet queen, she was very upset that her colleague once had the effrontery to suggest she could link her up with a male partner. Who is she? “Can you get me a boyfriend? You this ugly face,” she preened as she narrated the story. In response, the unnamed woman on the trip, who constantly inflated Vicky’s ego, chipped in, “Does she know your taste in men? Why didn’t you tell her that if you were really in need of a male partner, you would have about 2,000 men at your beck and call!”

Things were only just warming up. The gears soon shifted and the conversation entered cruise control. Vicky began to veer towards what she said back in August: that corrupt politicians are a reflection of a corrupt society and that she was under pressure to steal public funds. Then, bang, she hit the head on the nail. “I will not quit politics until I make one million dollars!” she told the unnamed woman in the car with her. She didn’t know that her driver was taping her. He later turned in the tape to a radio station.

It’s hard to tell why Vicky’s driver snitched on her or what he stood to gain from it all. Of all the things Vicky said that day, however, the part that has played the most here is President Mahama firing her for what many believe was her unguarded comment about making one million dollars from politics.

The news of Vicky’s sack must have come as some sort of amusement to our politicians, who are used not only to saying but also doing the unthinkable without a care. Our politicians have said and done worse, not privately like Vicky, but openly and shamelessly. At the height of the disgraceful kidnap of former governor Chris Ngige from the Government House, for example, the instigator, Chris Uba, said he resorted to self-help when his attempts to control the state’s purse were rebuffed. He said his investment in Ngige’s campaign was purely a commercial transaction and he couldn’t understand why he had to start a fight with the governor to make the point. Lamidi Adedibu, the late godfather of Ibadan politics operated pretty much the same way.

If Uba and Adedibu got away with murder because they were not public officers, haven’t we seen ministers in President Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet cross the line with their noses turned up? Apart from stabbing others in the back – a normal thing with most ordinary people – all Vicky wanted to do was share small dirty secrets with a friend.

Our own ministers have their snouts in the trough using public funds to buy cars worth twice the amount Vicky dreamed of from a lifetime in politics or importing beef from Harrods. It would be a cold day in hell when President Jonathan would even notice he has to call his ministers to order.

Will Vicky go down with her dirty laundry? No one is exactly sure. The opposition New Patriotic Party in Ghana insists that this is more than a case of indiscretion or wishful thinking gone messy. Vicky had also boasted, during the conversation, about the role played by a minister of state and wife of the president’s counsel before judgement on the presidential election petition was delivered in August 2012. “I learnt, even before the verdict, Nana (Oye Lithur, the minister of state) was with the justices and all that. You don’t know the role she has played for us to win the court case,” Vicky said on tape.

Now the opposition insists that apart from cracking the whip, the Ghanaian president must come clean on what he personally knew about the meeting with the justices. Fair enough. Or, Vicky will inescapably be seen as the government’s burnt offering, a sacrifice to cover up Mahama’s sordid affair with the judiciary.

This story is far from over.

—–

Read this piece in Leadership

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.