Atinga-Trokosi Alliance In Trouble?

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

The Daily Guide recently reported that at a Volta Alliance confabulation of the Trokosi-Wing of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), the National Chairman of the party bitterly bemoaned what Dr. Kwabena Adjei termed as the unusually high spate of corruption among the top-hierarchy members of the NDC (See "Volta NDC Unhappy" Ghanaweb.com 1/5/14). Dr. Adjei also, reportedly, decried the "dangerous level of corruption and greed among the current government appointees overseeing the affairs of the country."

In other words, the NDC National Chairman dressed down what he implicitly termed as a grossly unelightened Ghanaian electorate that had misguidedly voted a pathologically incompetent party into the august seat of democratic governance. Of course, those of us avid students of postcolonial Ghanaian politics fully appreciate the fact that the Ghanaian electorate is, unarguably, foremost among the ranks of the most enlightened critical mass of voters within the West African sub-region. And so, really, Dr. Adjei may well have been adumbrating on the fact that the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress are widely suspected to have massively rigged Election 2012, thus the all-too-appropriateness for the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party to have hotly litigated the same at the Supreme Court.

We are also fully aware of the fact that almost every single one of the nine jurists who presided over the Election 2012 Presidential Petition, is not only fully convinced about the fact of the Afari-Gyan-supervised poll having effectively gone down to the proverbial dogs but, even more signficantly, the fact that the Mahama government may have flagrantly, if not outright criminally, violated Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution by governing without a mandate. Still, whether in rather illogically affording the gubernatorial greenlight to the Mahama government, the Supreme Court had objectively sided with the inalienable wishes of the majority of the Ghanaian electorate, and thus conscientiously enhanced the quality of the country's democratic culture, is a verdict that squarely belongs to posterity.

What is interesting here and worth highlighting is that the Trokosi-Mafia confab in Ho was a veritable "Bitching Session." It clearly appears to have been convened to balance accounts and draw the gravy-train conclusion of whether, indeed, Little Dramani had acquitted himself creditably in the numbers game of the Trokosi-Mafiosi. Dear Reader, I bet my proverbial bottom-dollar that until this present reading, you had probably thought that the most dangerous Mafia organization in the country was headquartered in the Akyem-Abuakwa royal capital of Kyebi. Now, you be the judge.

By the books of the Trokosi-Mafiosi, predictably, the Mahama-led Atinga faction of the NDC is squarely to blame for the unprecedented level of unemployment among the handout-seeking adult population of the Volta Region. In other words, for these faux-socialist and welfare-minded Trokosi-Mafia nationalists, the primary responsibility of the government is to create jobs - government jobs, of course - for them and their relatives, rather than draft and promote policies conducive to the creative and productive initiative of individuals and groups of diligent citizens.

For Mr. Dan Abodakpi, an ex-criminal convict made diplomat, for example, membership longevity in the NDC ought to be made the primary, if not the sole, criterion for the selection of government appointees. Consequently, Mr. Douglas Bani, the Chief-of-Staff of the Volta Regional Minister, came up for special dresssing down by Mr. Abodakpi, who intemperately described Mr. Bani as a brazen freeloading newcomer. "Where were you when we were down in the mud and sweating for the good fortunes of the party?" The former NDC-MP for Keta growled.

To paraphrase Ghana and Africa's foremost prose-stylist, Mr. Ayi Kwei Armah, Mr. Rawlings has killed an elephant for the Trokosi-Mafiosi. But that Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho chaired this Trokosi-Mafia bitching session, ought to serve as both an eye-opener and a wake-up call to the interminably divisive cynics among the ranks of the New Patriotic Party.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Jan. 6, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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