Africa Watch magazine lacks credibility

The story has been circulating on the various Ghanaian media websites for quite some time now; I just decided to give it the pass that it obviously deserved until events and activities worthy of prompt attention and discussion had slowed down a bit. First of all, only a very desperate detractor of the Akufo-Addo-led main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) would buy into the inexcusably silly narrative of key party operatives, with the predictable exception of Messrs. Paul A. Afoko and Kwabena A. Agyepong, having flown in some four Serbian combatants to train party executives for the possibility of launching a Rwanda-type of full-scale war with the objective of ousting the election-rigging National Democratic Congress (NDC), whose General-Secretary has, by the way, categorically stated for media consumption that his party has made a fine art of effectively and perennially rigging elections in the country in its favor.

Of course, those who have been studiously following my columns are well aware of the fact that I have a head-scratching problem with the media operative to whom Mr. Afoko chose to tell, or sell, his story, namely, the editor-publisher of that scandal-sheet called Africa Watch Magazine, Mr. Steve Mallory (aka Kwadwo Osei). Indeed, even as I write, I have in the “Inbox” of my E-mail letters from two young women detailing their wanton and flagrant exploitation by the editor-publisher of Africa Watch Magazine. The letters were specifically written and posted to me unsolicited because, according to the writers, they had read several of my articles which pointed to my being full of spite and disdain for Mr. Mallory. One had even offered to interview yours truly for an article in the Atlantic Monthly, the globally renowned magazine, because she intended to teach the editor-publisher of Africa Watch Magazine an unforgettable lesson in ethics which would also see his career completely and thoroughly obliterated from the media firmaments.

One of the complainants described herself as an African-American and a very hardworking professional saleswoman, with considerable media sales experience, who had been hired to market the Mallory scandal-sheet to college students across the American northeast. She had fulfilled her part of the bargain, she painfully noted in her letter, only to be hoodwinked and contractually stiffed by “Mr. Spiv” Mallory. It well appears as if this Edweso/Ejisu Boy is involved in some form of Ponzi Scheme, in which he serially robs Peter to pay Paul; in this particular instance, perhaps, Naomi to pay Nora.

The second letter writer, who was then touring a couple of European countries with her father, a Kenyan-born professor, along with some study-abroad students, sounded especially desperate to get back at Mr. Mallory. She appeared to be the one who referred the other woman to me. Both had worked for the Africa Watch Magazine at different times and had been left high and dry by their former boss, after the Ghanaian-born magazine proprietor had presented them with decent working conditions on paper. Naomi, not her real name, did not want her former boss to have any wind of either her contact with me or our several phone and textual interchanges, which left me wondering that, perhaps, she had struck more than a purely professional relationship with the Africa Watch Magazine editor-publisher. I did not hesitate to probe into this aspect of her relationship with Mr. Mallory which she promptly denied.

When we spoke on the phone, Naomi let it on to me that after putting considerable pressure on Mr. Mallory, including the threat of getting me to do a media exposé on the man, she had managed to receive a quite decent fraction of the money owed her. The debtor had also given Naomi his good word – which she considered to be worth the monetary equivalent of shinplaster – that the rest of his debt would be liquidated in no time. Well, as of this writing, some two years later, it is not known whether the onetime Akufo-Addo media point-man in the United States ever fully settled his debts. Not that it is my lookout, having already made it categorically clear to these two wounded women that, indeed, while I had absolutely no affection or fondness for the man, nevertheless, I did not also intend to take undue advantage of his scandalous foibles to score cheap political points. But I still keep the letters in my “Inbox” and do read it from time to time for a good laugh or two.

Does anybody in his/her presence of mind really believe that if the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party wanted to start a civil war in Ghana, the alleged “conspirators” would be training for such a decidedly dangerous exercise within the benign and cozy confines of a hotel located in the Accra metropolis, and then in full public view? You see, when someone hates your guts or is filled with venom for you, even when you good-naturedly greet them with “Hello, there!” s/he would angrily and bitterly report to her/his fellow detractors that you have called his beloved mother’s chastity into question. Mr. Afoko claims that the purported Serbian-managed military training for some New Patriotic Party executives took place sometime in April 2014. And so the logical question to ask here is this: Why did the then-NPP National Chairman wait for two long years in order to publicly disclose the same? Or has Mr. Afoko simply forgotten the fact that his apparently deliberate failure to promptly report this treasonable offence to our security agencies makes him even far more criminally culpable than the people he seeks to so publicly incriminate?

Indeed, as then-Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Afoko actually stood far more guilty of the treasonable crimes he now conveniently claims had been committed by some key operatives of his own party on his blind side (See “Afoko Lied About Serbians Training NPP Officials – Baako” Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/28/16). The estranged former NPP Chairman has been fingered for having, indeed, officially addressed the opening session of the alleged military training confab he now claims to have been totally unaware of. Mr. Afoko vehemently denies addressing any such military-training confab. But, here again, the question remains: Why did Chairman Afoko not promptly report the subversive elements among the top-echelon membership of his party to our national security agencies, if he really wants Ghanaians to believe that he was the sole patriot among the “hoodlum” pack?

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