President Atta Mills is set to embark on his first international travel to Nigeria on Saturday since assuming office as President of the Republic of Ghana last Wednesday. Mills’ office says he would be attending an ECOWAS Mediation Committee Summit meeting and is expected back on Sunday. In his absence, Vice President John Mahama will act as President. But Ghanaians are already making notes of the President’s impending travel, mirroring the impending maiden trip against the numerous by his predecessor, J.A. Kufuor, which earned him tags like ‘Absentee President’, ‘Visiting President’ (to Ghana) and ‘Travel-Happy’. “Well, we live to see how many he would make in the four years he would spend in the presidency, and we will have to keep counting if he is lucky enough to get a second nod. “You don’t vilify your opponent and commit the same crimes as he did and for which you vilified him,” volunteered Mr. Michael Osei Arhin, a Marketer. Ex-President Kufuor is credited with international travels far in excess of one hundred, and while he elaborately defended his need to market Ghana and his vision and programmes for a better nation as justification for those trips, his critics reduced his defences to a mere ‘ridiculous’. The last time he travelled outside Ghana and in official capacity, he was in neighbouring Liberia where he received that country’s highest honour for “his role in the restoration of peace, democracy and stability” to Liberia. Immediately preceding that trip was a two-week ‘sojourn’ beyond the shores of Ghana that found him in the United States, hosted by no other than George Bush, outgoing President, who treated Kufuor to a three-day State visit in Washington. Kufuor also addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The gravamen of his critics had been the cost of his trips to the nation, (including charges of travelling with too many people), and in the particular case of the two-week trip to the US, how much in per diem was to be paid to accompanying ‘friendly’ journalists. The Lens newspaper on Tuesday September 16, 2008 reported that the former president travelled with an entourage of 156 people at a cost of GH¢11 million to the taxpayer. Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako Jnr., one of the accompanying journalists, was to be paid a per diem of US$6,500, according to the paper, while other journalists were receiving US$6000. Kwaku Baako denied the claim, and called the publication an ‘outrageous’ and ‘regrettable’ piece. Of course the paper also reported that Alfred Ogbamey, Editor of the Gye Nyame Concord newspaper, was on the trip to the US. It turned out that Alfred was minding his newspaper job and was indeed grounded in Accra. Eventually when then President Kufuor decided he had had enough of the international travels, he looked nationwide, intending to travel the length and breadth of the country in what was termed ‘Aseda Tours’ . He was going round the country to thank the governed for supporting his government, only to receive a reprimand from Otumfuo Osei Tutu II in Kumasi who thought the thanksgiving trips could wait while Kufuor concentrated on his job of governing the country till his last day in office. It is not immediately clear who else will be making Mills’ maiden official trip, but the count certainly is on and according to Forster Brehini, a human resource executive, Mill’s personal dislike of the Kufuor tours must guide him. Story by Isaac Yeboah