Atiwa-Atweredu as a Foretaste of Things to Come, If…

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

Ever since the predictable Atiwa by-election, occasioned by the death of its substantive Member of Parliament (MP), whose name I cannot readily recall, I have been too deeply mired in my own worldly cares to be able to promptly draw any comments and conclusions regarding the violence and mayhem that characterized a democratic process that ought to have come to pass without so much as one or two shoving matches here and there.

Unfortunately, since the violence-prone key operatives of the National Democratic Congress had sworn to strong-arm their way into a highly unlikely electoral victory, there was absolutely no other recourse on the part of the opposition New Patriotic Party but to countervail force with its own match. What was quite fascinating here, though, was the fact of many of the key operatives of the NDC having created the sort of “no-go” climate which characterized the Southern-Volta Basin, a largely ethnic Ewe enclave, during the frenetic general elections of 2008. In the latter instance, not only had giant trees been felled across roadways to render the area virtually inaccessible to non-native Ghanaian citizens, even some distinguished Ewe natives with Akan names had been mauled senseless and almost lost their lives!
In essence, and we have ventured this way before, when the key operatives of the NDC dub the Volta Region as their party’s World Bank, they unmistakably imply that not even Jesus Christ of Nazareth could prevail on the citizens and inhabitants of this portion of Ghana to vote for any presidential candidate campaigning on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party.

In the rather poetic imagination of the Southern Volta electorate – at least as strikingly represented by their major leaders among the ranks of the NDC – the NPP is a bona fide Akan political establishment with which any critical mass among their own only trucks at great peril to their collective interests. And to be certain, it has even been alleged that President John Evans Atta-Mills was overwhelmingly voted for by the Southern Volta electors, as it were, far less because of his Akan ethnic nationality than the fact of him having been appointed and, for that matter, anointed by Togbui Avaklasu I, the most powerful pseudo-monarch of the sub-region in what has sarcastically come to be known as The Swedru Declaration, far in advance of the party’s own established democratic protocol.

And so, really, how did it come about that key Ewe NDC operatives like Ms. De Souza presumed to be chauffeur-driven into Atiwa-Atweredu, the very constituency in which yours truly began part of his first-grade education – at the Akyem-Kwabeng Presbyterian Primary School – and began facilely, callously, nonchalantly and recklessly mowing down pedestrian voters in hopes of intimidating enough of their numbers in order to turn the electoral tide in favor of the ruling National Democratic Congress?
Is this, perhaps, a signal rhetorical mode by which the Anlo-Ewe leaders intend to communicate their utmost desire to rendering us, the Akan-Ghanaian majority, second-class citizens in our own strongholds? If so, then the Avaklasu lackeys and minions had better be put on notice that Mr. Emile Short, the recently retired Chairman of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), was not far off the predictable contingency when the distinguished legal maven recently warned Ghanaians against complacently envisaging the Rwandan Apocalypse as one of which our national temperament had, somehow, matured beyond.
I have often observed, and I still firmly stand by the same observation, that were the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians clinically prone to the sort of violent irrationality that appears to be the hallmark of the NDC Mafia kingpins, our country would have gone the way of either Rwanda or Liberia eons ago, with absolutely no recourse for any remarkable recovery. Recent events in Atiwa-Atweredu should offer a prime sit-up grist to those NDC ethnic chauvinists inebriated by the grossly mistaken belief that Akyem-Mansa – and particularly Akyem-Abuakwa – was created out of a cringing spirit of cowardice.
And as a direct descendant of Otumfuo Osei-Tutu I, I must be expected to remarkably appreciate at least half of what I am talking about.
Anyway, what really drew my sedulous attention to the Atiwa-Atweredu mayhem, was a news article captioned “Jake: I’m Ready to Co-operate with Police, But….” (See MyJoyOnline.com 9/29/10), in which the National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the party’s General-Secretary, Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie, and staunch party activist. Ms. Frances Assiam were invited by the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) of the Ghana Police Service for questioning, regarding events surrounding the Atiwa-Atweredu by-elections, at the devious instigation of a nondescript group going by the name of Media Analysts of the NDC, almost as if our august traditional security agencies have lost their bearings.

Maybe the very first question that the CID chief ought to have asked is as follows: How came it about that Ms. Assiam is today a bona fide member of the NPP, rather than the NDC whose women’s wing Ms. Assiam had served as, perhaps, the most efficient leader? In other words, it is almost as if the evidently shameless Media Analysts of the NDC have so soon and scandalously forgotten the adage that: “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute and the author of a forthcoming volume of poetry titled “The Obama Serenades.” E-mail: [email protected].
###