Afari-Gyan Does Not Deserve His Pension

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

It is rather nauseating to hear Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia lie through his teeth with the whole-cloth of mendacious assertion that resorting to the Supreme Court for redress "was not the first option" left to an electorally aggrieved Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See "Praise Afari-Gyan for Ghana's Peace, Not Akufo-Addo" JoyOnline.com/Ghanaweb.com 8/31/13).

Maybe we need to remind the General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that it was the arrogant refusal by the Electoral Commissioner - upon a special written request by Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, the National Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) - for Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan to review his initially published results of the 2012 presidential election, that forced the judicial alternative on the aggrieved NPP petitioners.

Indeed, it was Dr. Afari-Gyan himself who rudely riposted that if the petitioners did not agree with his patently fraudulent declaration of Mr. Mahama as winner of Election 2012, they could immediately proceed to the Supreme Court. In other words, it was the flat and abject refusal of Dr. Afari-Gyan to perform the job for which he has been regularly paid by Ghanaian taxpayers for the past twenty years, that compelled the NPP petitioners to resort to the Supreme Court.

Contrary to what Mr. Asiedu-Nketia would have his audiences believe, had his first option been to plunge the country into chaos, security blustery by the Mahama posse and all, pretty little could have been done to stop the New Patriotic Party's Presidential Candidate and his associates and supporters from doing so. What is more significant to highlight here, however, is the Electoral Commissioner's own exhibition of gross professional incompetence and behavioral insolence at the post that he has held for more than two decades.

And this is primarily why we are also calling for the immediate removal of Dr. Afari-Gyan from his post without any retirement benefits, in lieu of having the former University of Ghana political science lecturer rigorously prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, for criminally misrepresenting his professional credentials and his patent admission of fraud and false pretences in the witness box. We even hear the man excrementally soiled his pants in court. I can almost smell it. Serves him right!

Then also, I am interested in recalling for the benefit of the Ghanaian public that the first public reaction of Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, in the wake of Dr. Afari-Gyan's fraudulent declaration of President John Dramani Mahama as winner of Election 2012, was to apologetically accuse Nana Akufo-Addo and Messrs. Mahamudu Bawumia and Obetsebi-Lamptey of not having been vigilant enough to prevent National Democratic Congress polling operatives from stealing their votes. Mr. Mahama may well like to launch an investigation into this Asiedu-Nketia faux-pas.

What the foregoing clearly means is that in the lead-up to the Supreme Court petition, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia firmly believed that the entire conduct of the 2012 presidential election by Dr. Afari-Gyan had been a sham. Needless to say, the Electoral Commissioner's naked admission before the Atuguba-presided court-of-last-resort that, indeed, over-voting did take place, as well as voting without biometric verification, at the public and official instance of the presidential incumbent, ought to have sent the entire pack of NDC hoodlums scurrying out of the Flagstaff House, were the clinical or impartial rule of jurisprudence not such a rare commodity in our country.

Obviously, saving face for a visibly and decidedly disgraced Dr. Afari-Gyan may be the next priority of the NDC scribe and his paymaster and their associates, but it ought not to be made the priority of Ghanaian citizens at large. Oh no, not by any stretch of the imagination! Then also, the reported GHC 3.5 million spent in televising the petition hearings is absolutely in no way a reckless waste of resources, as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia would have the rest of us believe. In fact, this recording has the potentiality of a classical pedagogical text for students of civics, history, political science, government and law, and even philosophy and college composition and literature!

What is a criminal waste of money is the GYEEDA scam, in which hundreds of millions of dollars of the public dole/dough was recklessly and callously parceled out to no-show contractual cronies and associates of the erstwhile Mills-Mahama government, and now the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur government of the so-called National Democratic Congress. Chalk up also the Woyome caper, and the cost of covering the 2012 presidential petition hearings pales into the virtual and practical insignificance of what New Yorkers call "chum/pocket change."

But that an apparently NDC-packed Supreme Court would so grossly err in even the mere delivery of its own verdict, is what ought to worry the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens. We have just learned that, indeed, the verdict of the Atuguba-presided court on the Election 2012 impasse was actually 5-4, and not 6-3, as originally and officially announced by Justice William Atuguba. Now who is being the fraudulent liar here? Contempt of court charge for me? My foot!

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
August 31, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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