My dear President, I greet you. I hope this letter finds you well.

I’m one of the many Ghanaians who wish you well so please don’t look at the title of my piece and throw this friendly letter of mine under the carpet, I mean no harm. 

If there’s any seat I’d envy to sit on now, it certainly won’t be yours. It’s the hottest place to want to be.

You’ve had the fiercest baptism of fire in barely eleven months as elected President.You sat on thorns to see your legitimacy as President challenged in the highest court of our land for eight months.

There’s been too many strikes by labor unions this year alone than any other year of my memory under this fourth republic.

You probably must be overwhelmed by what has almost become a weekly expose of one corruption scandal after the other with state institutions and public officials deeply involved- we just got a bronze medal recently for that.

I still remember how your name was jokingly used as a greeting when lights were turned off as erratic power was the order of the day at the beginning of the year; m’ema wo dumso oo, yaa Mahama.

You dealt with those marauding Chinese illegal miners who were ripping our lands and killing our people.

You’ve just taken the bitter pill of seeing utility tariffs upped so we can pay ‘realistic’ charges for quality service and organized labor is on your neck, threatening a national blackout strike in less than a week’s time for that hard decision.

Everybody is complaining of our harsh economy resulting from skyrocketing taxes and rising cost of living and the hawks in your party won’t let you be. 

These are certainly hard times and my sympathies are with you! 

But you see, the Country you lead is called Ghana- where we hardly give up so you have no option; get up, dust yourself and get to work! 

Here are my wayside tips on what you must do and do now! I would doubt if you don’t know these already. 

Anytime I’ve heard you speak, you say our country’s future is bright and that we should tighten our belts and pinch ourselves ‘small’ as we wait for honey to flow someday. 

Mr President, you need to pinch yourself too! Yes, tighten your belts too, and it has to be now! 

First, cut your own salary, yes your own salary, and why not? If I’m reducing the balls of kenkey I take daily from two to one because times are hard, you need to show me an example of how to do it as my President. 

We are in desperate times and that calls for desperate action. 

Please cut down on the number of your Ministers. I’ve heard some say reducing our Ministers would not change the 70 per cent of our national expenditure that goes into wages. I agree, after all how much we spend on less than 100 appointees may be insignificant relative to the about 700,000 people we spend the bill on.

But you see, your Excellency, that would send a strong message- that times are hard and you as President, are taking drastic measures to help everybody. You don’t owe anybody a job anyways. 

For the Ministers and public officers that we have already, cut their salaries and other benefits, show them you are boss! 

Let them buy their own fuel- they earn enough to be able to do that. Your order for them to pay for their own utilities was spot on, good job! I hope it works. 

They say they want to serve us; it’s not the other way round. 

I’m sure you heard that your colleague President of Malawi, Joyce Banda has sold her presidential jet and a fleet of 60 government Mercedes limousines to feed more than one million people suffering chronic food shortages in that country. 

You couldn’t have missed the news that this same woman sacked her entire cabinet en bloc on charges of corruption. 

Elsewhere, you must probably be aware that your friend, Uhuru Kenyata, who is President of Kenya has also begun a whistle blower website where ordinary citizens can report acts of corruption directly to him with a guarantee of action. 

Some of us have not given up on you yet because we know that when you fail, our country fails and when you succeed, we are in it together. 

Nobody is saying you have ordered people to create, loot and share our money, neither are we saying we are suffering because we voted John Mahama as President, at least not me. 

But like my friend Manasseh Azure Awuni wrote recently, our sages of old were not wrong when they said: "An old man who sits at home and watches children eat python is not left out when a roll call of python eaters is conducted. 

They also said a chief who does not punish evil commands it to be done. 

Finally, they said the disease which will kill a man first breaks sticks into his ears”.