Asiedu-Nketia And Adams Are Both Brazen Political Opportunists

Messrs. Asiedu-Nketia And Adams Are Both Brazen Political Opportunists

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 4, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

It is a very interesting story; for it is typically Ghanaian and even-handedly scandalous. The General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) accuses one of his several deputies of being a stomach-oriented political opportunist and a traitor. And then in an unlikeliest of scenarios, the notoriously barb-tongued deputy promptly shoots back by telling the entire nation, and the world, that his boss, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, after all, has been ravenously feeding off the well-greased and generous palms of one of the most vocal opposition parliamentarians.

But wait, that is not all; no, that is scarcely the end of this bombshell. Mr. Kofi Adams, the sometime lickspittle of the swashbuckling Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, also tells us that the man popularly known as General Mosquito, more for his shark-sharp tongue than his gangly physique, actually borrowed money from Mr. Kennedy Agyapong, the fire-sitting New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, to pay for his light bill (See "Asiedu-Nketia Borrowed NPP Money to Pay Light Bill - Kofi Adams" Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/31/14).

Needless to say, there is absolutely nothing wrong about borrowing money from even a political opponent, once awhile, to tide oneself up. After all, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia was once, himself, a member of the august Ghanaian parliament from the Seikwa township/constituency of the Brong-Ahafo Region. And Divine Providence knows full-well that when it comes to brasstacks, the members of our National Assembly are virtual siamese twins. So far, the Mosquito General has not commented on Mr. Adams' quite caustic and utterly shaming allegation. Neither has Mr. Agyapong, the Assin-Central MP, said anything about the same.

In reality, though, this allegation is hardly a big deal, for as my deceased old man was fond of saying, if you really want to fully appreciate the tired phrase of "politics making strange bedfellows," you only have to examine the relationship between the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR), now the Russian Federation (RF), and the United States of America (USA) in order to draw the most appropriate and relevant conclusions. In sum, according to the old man, the relationship between the former rival superpowers exuded the patently hypocritical and morally unprincipled.

"America claims that Russia is her mortal enemy. And yet, anytime the Russians scream in the middle of the night, complaining of nightmares and the acute pangs of hunger, Uncle Sam would ship in mega-tons of wheat and rice. Who do these 'superclowns' think they are fooling, anyway?"

The old man preferred to characterize the preceding as the "Sacred Brotherhood of Racism." Otherwise, how does one explain America's perennial deaf ears to the anguished cries of many a Third-World nation's cries for food and other material assistance? You have a powerful hungry enemy at your throat, and you claim that feeding that enemy fat and strong is your most intelligent strategy for vanquishing this sullen vampire of a foe! What kind of nonsense is that?

Still, what makes Mr. Adams' allegation against Mr. Asiedu-Nketia bite to the quick, is the fact that the Mosquito General has so cavalierly presumed to make himself the benchmark, or epitome, of loyalty among the leadership of the National Democratic Congress. Campaigning for embattled NDC National Chairman Dr. Kwabena Adjei, recently, for instance, the Mosquito Man was widely reported to have made the following remarks, among a plethora of others: "The next most important thing is loyalty, loyalty to the cause of the NDC. Are you dealing with people who when they lose elections, they begin singing with the opposition; wining and dining with the opposition? Are you going to elect leaders who have no problem leaking insider party information to the opposition?"

The latter allusion, of course, regards what came to be widely known as "The Adams/Otchere-Darko Affair." But that Mr. Adams appears to be clearly and curiously apologetic about his poignant exposure of his boss to national ridicule, is all the more intriguing, if also because it is risibly pathetic. I mean, why go there at all, if you are also deathly afraid of the consequences?

_____________________________________________________________