A Rascally Liar Sings the Blues

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The cheapest purchase on credibility is often acquired by cynical pretense to familiarity with one’s subject of obloquy. This pretty much informs the thrust of an article titled “The Metamorphosis and Wrath of Dr. Ahoofe,” which appeared in the Ghanaweb.com edition of August 22, 2008.

Likewise, it has since long been observed that familiarity breeds contempt; and so to enable the writer of the aforementioned article demonstrate “credible contempt” for yours truly, Mr. Kwesi Yeboah had to quickly establish his bona fides by claiming to be descended from the same forebears and clan as Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

There is one catch here, though; and it is that yours truly has never met anybody from Kyebi-Adadientem sporting the name of “Kwesi” Yeboah in his life. And to be certain, while, indeed, he knows, pretty well, the direction of Adadientem from Kyebi, this writer has never been to Adadientem, even while also readily acknowledging through a remarkable corpus of his literary fare that Adadientem is, indeed, one of his significant ancestral homes.

The preceding notwithstanding, my familial lineage originates from the Nkronso royal family, from the Amankwaa Pam branch; and so Mr. Yeboah would have an extremely difficult time placing this writer under the same roof as himself. The bottom-line, insofar as kinship is concerned, is thus one of geographical myth and theory; which ultimately does not mean much, for proximity is invariably all too protean and diffuse to mean much beyond the imagination of the one who so wills.

Needless to say, the name Kwesi Yeboah, itself, is rather common, if also because it is typically Akan. Still, nobody in my family – in traditional African parlance, that is – spells his name “Kwesi,” and so right there I knew there was something amiss somewhere; and about the only “Kwasi” Yeboah that I know of comes from Wirenkyiren-Amanfrom, and he was a notorious thief who specialized in the theft of farm produce. Kwasi Yeboah would never cultivate his own farm or even garden, but would rather wait for the harvest season. And then at dawn Kwasi Yeboah would steal himself into the farm of the most productive farmer in Amanfrom and swiftly make away with the choicest produce. He was to spend several years in prison. The narrative thrust, or intent, is in no way suggestive, notwithstanding the striking nominal similarity.

In any case, isn’t it rather quixotic for Mr. Kwesi Yeboah to pontifically claim to have thoroughly digested my book titled “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and then proceed to make such grotesque, outrageous and outright obtuse attributions as this author having asserted that it was Dr. Danquah, and not Mr. Tetteh Quarshie, who introduced cocoa from Equatorial Guinea to the erstwhile Gold Coast? And I am supposed to be proud to be hailing from the same Kwaebibirem with such an oaf?

Perhaps a far more knowledgeable Ghanaian historian ought to enlighten Mr. Yeboah, regarding the fact of the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics having exhorted President Nkrumah to build the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital at Akuapem-Mampong. Still, as to what is patently insubstantial about my book on Dr. Danquah, Mr. Yeboah does not state, having apparently assumed beforehand that his audience would not be apt to be the critically thinking type, wont to promptly demanding corroborative evidence for such rhetorical fluff as the critic liberally and unconscionably indulges. And here, too, we think we know the answer – and it is that the Halifax denizen appears to glibly presume his alleged, albeit unproven, kinship with this author to adequately make up for his abject lack of critical scholastic thrust. And he may well be right, for his Ghanaweb.com chat-room supporters and misguided sympathizers facilely and all-too-predictably appear to be of the same “intellectual” temperament as this self-alienated and delusional anti-Danquah poster-boy. But then nothing really meaningful is gained, short of savagely fulfilling the tired traditional role of an Iscariot.

And isn’t it also rather ignominious for the Halifax critic to, on the one hand, characterize Dr. Danquah as a grumpy and petty-minded run-of-the-mill politician of absolutely no substance, while exuberantly and hyperbolically celebrating the man who recklessly and crassly exploited the poor Ghanaian cocoa farmer in delirious furtherance of his vaulting “Kongi-esque” pan-Africanist ambitions, even while also, paradoxically, blaming the desperate struggle of the very same farmer for self-preservation, by way of eking out a decent living, on “tribalism.”

On the preceding score, this is what former Cocoa-Marketing Board Chief Executive Officer Mr. Kwame Pianim recently had to say, among other things: “[Under the reign of Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, there emerged a dramatic] break from the previous time when the stabilization principle that was the raison d’être [for] the establishment of the Cocoa Marketing Board had been vitiated into a fiscal tool of government for taxing the cocoa farmers for the industrialization push of President Nkrumah. The [damnable] result of this practice had been that the portion of the world fob [free-on-board?] price of cocoa that went to the farmer hovered around 27% for decades” (Ghanaian Chronicle 8/22/08).

Then there is this drivel about Dr. Danquah purportedly attempting to capitalize on the 1961 railroad workers’ strike in order to unseat President Nkrumah. Back then, Dr. Danquah was even capriciously accused by President Nkrumah of having personally instigated the workers at Sekondi-Takoradi when, in fact, contrary to the received CPP brand of postcolonial Ghanaian history, during the entire duration of the strike, the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics had not even ventured outside the nation’s capital of Accra! Likewise, an increasingly paranoid and manically depressed President Nkrumah would accuse Dr. Danquah of having convened a clandestine meeting of United Party executives when, in reality, the date, venue and time, as well as the agenda of the purportedly “clandestine” meeting, as the Doyen himself shortly attested, had been widely published in almost every one of the major Ghanaian newspapers of the period.

As for Mr. Yeboah’s nonsense about Okoampa-Ahoofe feeling uncomfortable with President Kufuor on a decidedly fleeting, albeit quite significant, ideological issue, the least remarked upon, the better. Suffice it, however, to say that this writer also has a far more significant kinship with President Kufuor than he could likely ever have with Mr. Yeboah, whom he has never met in his life! And on the Akyea-Mensah question, indeed, if any “catastrophe” or “mayhem” is apt to be unleashed anywhere and anytime soon, as adumbrated by Mr. Yeboah himself, it is the Halifax critic’s at once tawdry, incoherent and irreverent attempt to desecrate the painful memory of my maternal granduncle that is most likely to touch off such an apocalypse!

In the end, though, Mr. Yeboah seems to agree with this author that relatively speaking, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah was a lackluster toady of British colonial rule (his unconscionable decision to also trade with Apartheid South Africa further corroborates the latter observation), a poor imitation of chiefly indirect rule, where the firebrand and uncompromising Dr. Danquah doggedly pursued a dignified policy of “political gunslinging [sic] and audaciousness at the colonial administrators,” in the words of Mr. Yeboah. Indeed, Nkrumah’s voting record between 1951 and 1957 eloquently corroborates the preceding assertion by Mr. Yeboah.

In any event, whatever “prestigious award” the scandalously inarticulate dancer and would-be-Danquah detractor won that, in the colorful imagination of Mr. Yeboah, ought to license the “Ettokrom Dancer” with the right to cavalierly impugn the integrity, common sense and dignity of Drs. Danquah and Busia, as well as President Kufuor and the Okyenhene, has yet to be revealed to us.

One thing, however, is clear. Two years ago, a Ghanaian staff of the World Bank who schooled with Mr. Yeboah in Halifax informed yours truly about somebody in that part of Canada who proudly claimed to be my relative and also desired to establish personal communication links with this author. I promptly and politely refused the ready offer of Mr. Yeboah’s telephone number. I am not saying that this demurral has something to do with anything. I am only implying that some spiritually protective vibe had wisely counseled me, then, against taking up on, in hindsight, the sinister offer of kinship, and even friendship, by total strangers who would presume to insidiously establish bonds of destruction on the cheap.

Now, it takes the clinically morbid imagination of a character assassin to make up a lurid narrative such as yours truly prevailing on Mr. Francis Akoto, webmaster/proprietor of Ghanaweb.com, to remove all articles that I have written that cast President Nkrumah in favorable light. Not only does Mr. Yeboah maliciously impugn the integrity of Mr. Akoto, the Halifax critic also seems woefully, albeit recklessly, to underestimate the scholastic temperament of his arch-nemesis. In either case, this is libelous! Still, regarding Mr. Yeboah’s cock-and-bull story of Mr. Akoto doing me the unwholesome favor of deleting my pro-Nkrumah articles, my brother Eric Botta (Oyokoba) has already composed an impeccable rejoinder that objectively and dead-on accurately characterizes Mr. Yeboah for the scabrous idiot that he incontrovertibly is! (Ghanaweb.com 8/22/08). For the rest, we leave our readers and posterity to judge and draw their own conclusions. Suffice is to say, however, that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe staunchly stands by any books and articles that he has written and published in the past casting either President Nkrumah or any other personality in any sort of light, based solidly on information then available to this author. And you better believe this: I am not going back to “delete” the dedication of my published maiden collection of essays titled “Sounds of Sirens” (2004), which was partly dedicated to President Kwame Nkrumah!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].