Akufo-Addo should steer far away from the constitutional review report!

Ordinarily, I would be backing the call by the astute and internationally well-respected legal luminary, namely, Mr. Sam Awuku Okudzeto, for President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to revisit the report of the Albert K. Fiadjoe-chaired Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) – 2010-2012 – that was established by the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, but the scandalous events recently surrounding the vicious and coldly calculated sabotaging of the all-too-progressive decision to deepen Ghana’s democratic culture at the grassroots or local government level by some very powerful coup-plotting invested traditional rulers, both in and out of the National House of Chiefs (NHC), in cahoots with the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), with the devious complicity of some former presidents, convinces me beyond any iota of doubt that Nana Akufo-Addo would be far better off studiously and strenuously working around the clock to significantly upgrade the quality of the lives and the general living standards of the overwhelming majority of Ghana’s lumpen poor citizens and residents.

On the latter count, of course, we are referring to the inadvisably aborted December 17 Referendum on Articles 53(3) and 43(3) that would have ensured the direct election of all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives and District Assembly Representatives and Unit or Community Leaders by the very people that these local administrators and legislators are constitutionally designed and authorized to govern (See “Sam Okudzeto Advises Akufo-Addo to consider Constitutional Review Report” News Desk – Modernghana.com 1/8/20). From what I am very certain Nana Akufo-Addo soberly learned to his horror from this otherwise salutary historic episode, any attempt to revisit the report of the Constitutional Review Commission could almost definitely send Nana Akufo-Addo catastrophically crashing onto the gray margins of the political opposition and the New Patriotic Party remaining in opposition for a very long, long time to come, if not in perpetuity. Indeed, if I had not followed the career of Mr. Okudzeto for quite a considerable while now, I would have sworn that this was a setup, that is, a mischievous attempt to put Nana Akufo-Addo over the proverbial edge and directly or headlong into the stygian abyss.

You see, had his very public call on the President not come, I was going to hold off on this at once irredeemably pathetic and shameful seamy side of Ghanaian politics, but the otherwise opportune and foresighted call by Mr. Okudzeto leaves us with absolutely no other choice but to call a spade a spade and bluntly so. You see, the wounds are still too fresh and raw to make any room for mild-mannered diplomacy seem even hypocritically like the right thing to do. Which is that, personally, I am convinced that based on the characteristically scandalous attitude of a certain very powerful opportunistic $400,000 (USD) monarch, I am also fully convinced that I made the smartest choice of my life when I decided, in the wake of the landmark and seismic electoral victory of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party that while, there are absolutely no two ways about the fact of my great love and emotional attachment to Ghana and the Ghanaian people at large, nevertheless, there was also absolutely no way for me to have bent so low down in both my personal ethics and my dignity as to have readily desired to have become an active member or participant of any government or political party or establishment in this not-so-great land of my birth.

You see, Dear Reader, what I have grown and matured quickly to learn in my dangerously close to three-score years of age is that our leaders, at least a significant percentage of them, by and large, are so morally depraved and intellectually and philosophically so parochial and irredeemably so self-destructive as to make US President Donald John Trump seem like the most visionary and most progressive enlightened political despot and emulative inspiration that both Ghanaians and global Africans would be far better off looking up to as our most ideal role model. I am, at this juncture, much too upset and emotionally paralyzed to continue writing and making a clean breast of my spleen – my profound apologies to the immortalized Poet-of-Avon. But there is one thing that I thought would be worth the while for the leaders of Ghana’s ruling New Patriotic Party to be studiously watching out for, as the nation steadily heads for the polls in December 2020.

And it is that Ghanaians would be far better off strategizing and preparing to launch the most blistering and massive civil strife against the increasingly effete, static and decidedly ossified and obsolescent institution of the monarchy which, until the latest unpardonable act of betrayal, I staunchly supported as the lynchpin for the maintenance and the healthy preservation of our culture which, by the way, unlike what we have recently learned about the institution of the monarchy, is a constantly growing an self-improving human moral organism. I am also fully convinced beyond any iota of reasonable doubt that our future prosperity as Ghanaians and Africans directly depends on the total, all-out extirpation, if not destruction, of the morally and spiritually decadent institution of the monarchy. This is where the REAL REVOLUTION must begin. It cannot be any other way. The battle must be joined, pronto!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: [email protected]

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs