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President John Evans Atta Mills, Head of State of the Republic of Ghana, is doing everything to fashion his style of government on the path Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah took to lead Africa to form the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. On assuming power on January 7, 2009, one of President Atta Mills� pronouncements was to order the celebration of the birthday of the first President of this Republic as a national holiday. He also set up a committee of eminent people, headed by one-time University of Ghana Vice-Chancellor Prof. Akilakpa Sawyerr, to recommend a fitting means of preserving the memory of the man who led this nation to throw off the colonial yoke. To add to his credentials as an ardent fan of Dr. Nkrumah, the sitting President adopted the Chinese Tunic as his mode of dressing, just as his role model did when he was alive. With this drive to take on the image of the first President of Ghana, one would have thought that Prof. Mills would be vocal on issues affecting the continent, just as Nkrumah, his role model, did. The presidential transformation, though, appears to have ignored the voice with which the deceased head of state stirred the sleeping giant of Africa. On a number of key issues affecting the continent, the voice of the President of Ghana has been conspicuously absent. Last time round, when Cote d�Ivoire was in crisis and the international community waited on Ghana for direction, President Mills disappointed everybody. Instead of leading from the front, the President recoiled into his shell. He proclaimed the concept of Dzi Wo Fie Asem, mind your own business, as the official national foreign policy. It was one proclamation that disappointed the large mass of the people, and shocked Africa to its foundation. With Ghana pouring cold water on the need for Africa to take the lead role in the Ivorian crisis, Africa abandoned its turf to the French colonial masters, who ran the show. On Tuesday, President Atta Mills was on a state visit to South Africa when the civil war in Libya reached its crescendo with the invasion of the rebel forces on the compound of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli. Asked to comment on Ghana�s position on events unfolding in the Maghreb, President Atta Mills went back to the doctrine of no views. He played the Dzi Wo Fie Asem card founded on the concept of the three wise monkeys � See no evil, Hear no evil and Speak no evil. Under a President, who claims to model himself on Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana has lost its voice in the international community. After recoiling into his Dzi Wo Fie Asem shell, President Mills told reporters that he is waiting on the African Union before Ghana could join the crowd. In effect, Ghana�s role in Africa and world affairs is buried in the labyrinth of a muted African voice. It is a shame that at a point in time when the democratic credential of Ghana is making waves in the international community, our leadership is consigning Ghana into a nation without a voice. It is as if the President of the Republic lives in the fear of failing to make the right pronouncement. The declaration of President Atta Mills in South Africa is a disappointing indictment on the kind of leadership he is offering this country. Read the lips of the President in South Africa. �We, in Ghana, will be watching events, and at the appropriate time, we will take a decision, but let me emphasise that whatever decision we take, we would take into consideration the best interest of the Libyan people.� At what point in time are we going to take that decision when Libya is already in flames? The President�s assertion in South Africa could be likened to a father who has seen his children being slaughtered by an assailant, and proclaiming to the world that he is studying how things unfold before deciding what to do. By the time he would have reached whatever decision he intends to take, his children would have already been dead. The tragedy of Ghana is that a proud and assertive people are being led into timidity by a leadership which appears jittery before the international community. If I were the President, I would have pointed to the slaughter in Libya as an unacceptable face of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation�s (NATO) operations. The United Nations Security Council voted to mandate NATO to intervene in Libya to save the lives of the people who were at the mercy of a dictator who had slaughtered his own people for 42 years. The UN never asked the United States, Britain and France to arrogate to themselves the right to slaughter the people in more ways than Gaddafi ever did. That is what every Ghanaian expected President Atta Mills to bring this fact forcefully home. The average Ghanaian also expected President Mills to sound a word of caution to African dictators who have turned their leaderships into fiefdoms. Men like Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni, Paul Biya, Blaise Compoar�, Yahaya Jammeh, who continue to shame Africa by imposing themselves against the will of the people all this while, need to be told in the face to learn from the experience of Mohammed Muamar al-Gaddafi and mend their ways. As it is, President Mills has grossly failed the people of Ghana. Ghanaians are highly disappointed in the leadership credentials of their Head of State. The President is behaving like a lamb following the butcher to the slaughter house. Some of us are grossly disappointed in the leadership of the former law lecturer. He inspires no one. Rather, he dampens the spirit of a proud people. For the record, Gaddafi, the virtually defeated dictator of Libya, was born on June 7, 1942. In September 1969, almost 42 years to the day of his being deposed, he led a group of junior officers to depose King Idris, who was then in Turkey for medical treatment. Idris had left his nephew � Sayyid Hasan a-Rida al-Mahdi al-Sannissi � in charge of the then fiefdom. The nephew was swept aside by the revolutionary officers, who put him under house arrest. Gaddafi, then only 27, abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the nation, Libyan Arab Republic. He modeled his government on what Abdel Nasser was pursuing in nearby Egypt. He was fiercely anti-Western. Gaddafi ordered America and the British to pull out of the various military bases in Libya. In the heat of his revolution, Gaddafi threatened Western companies with expulsion from Libyan oil fields, unless Libya was given more percentage of oil revenue. Following his demands, oil companies operating in the country changed their payment schedule from 50-50 to 79-21 percent in favour of the Libyan government. Perhaps, the Ghanaian authorities would learn from the example pursued by Gaddafi to get oil companies to give this nation its due from oil fields in the Western Region, now virtually exploited mainly by Western interests. It is not the best of terms that Ghana, the nation whose oilfields are producing revenue for the Western exploiters, gets only 13 percent of oil revenue, while the Western companies appropriate the 87 percent to themselves. While oil revenue fueled reconstruction of Libya, dissent was seriously punished. Gaddafi made political dissent illegal, with anybody dissenting against his rule executed or put into prison. In December 1969, barely three months into Gaddafi�s leadership, he had to fall on Egypt to help quell an attempted coup on his fledging dictatorship. After that, no national, other than Gaddafi�s family members and close associates, had any say in how the affairs of the country were decided. Power, they say, corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Intoxicated with power, Gaddafi exported terrorism all over the world. When a British police woman, PC Fletcher, was slaughtered on guard duties in London in the 1980s, and a Pan American airline was bombed off the skies of Scotland, Gaddafi became a prime target for elimination by the triumvirate of the United States, Britain and France, whose nationals were the main casualties in the Lockerbie disaster. The three powers, leading NATO, exploited the mandate of the UN Security Council to engineer the attack on the Gaddafi dynasty.