Bogus Enquirer “Intelligence” Backfires

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

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) may be up to its pate in a stygian plume of “coke” smoke, but there is absolutely no doubt, whatsoever, that it is the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) that is experiencing all the proverbial high from such “free-basing.”

Well, in case any of our readers are wondering precisely what the “lede” to this article is all about, then may it promptly be known to that dear reader that we are simply alluding to a June 22, 2009, badly composed news item in which the fanatically pro-NDC rag, the Enquirer, claimed to have “intercepted” an NPP-USA electronic mail (e-mail) being allegedly dispatched to the White House, with the sinister motive of causing President Barack H. Obama to seriously consider scrapping his 24-hour stopover tour of Ghana between July 10 and 11 (See “Plot to Scatter Obama Visit Exposed.” Ghanaweb.com 6/22/09).

We must also quickly add, as a side-note to the Enquirer’s putatively abject lack of reportorial credibility, that not quite long ago that tabloid’s editor-in-chief, Mr. Raymond Archer, was found guilty by a legitimately constituted Ghanaian court of law to have deliberately lied under oath about a brutal physical assault that Mr. Archer was supposed to have suffered at the hands of some thugs, allegedly, hired by some unidentified hacks of the then-ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

During the course of legal proceedings, deriving largely from a victim’s complaint lodged by the Enquirer’s editor with the police, it shockingly came to light that one of the Ahwoi brothers, a professor in the employ of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), had deviously assisted Mr. Archer in choreographing a bizarre scenario in which the alleged victim splashed his designer suit, shirt and tie with tomato juice – yes, you read it right, “tomato juice” – to make it appear as if Mr. Archer had been brutally mauled by the aforesaid NPP attack dogs. Then on or about May 19, 2008, the Ghana Police Service considered initiating legal action against the Enquirer’s editor who was then accused of obstructing a criminal investigation into the activities of some notorious drug kingpins operating in the hub of our nation’s capital (MyJoyOnline.com 5/19/08).

Perhaps the most serious aspect of the “blood-tomato” story is not the fact that two prominent Ghanaian citizens who are supposed to morally role-model for our youth were pathetically caught in such a web of abjectly criminal mischief. Rather, it is the gut-wrenching fact that the presiding judge, curiously, simply admonished Mr. Archer and his “eruditely” criminal accomplice and let the two loose, once again, onto our city streets and readily poised for another egregious act of mischief. Thus, it ought not to come as any surprise, at all, that Mr. Archer would be up to such abjectly criminal mischief once more.

First of all, the very sophomoric notion that Mr. Archer would, indeed, “intercept” an NPP-USA E-mail meant for President Obama at the White House readily gives this NDC “diplomatic” scam right away. Needless to say, had he bothered to check up the meaning of the Transitive Verb “intercept,” the Enquirer’s editor would have promptly learned, to his utter disappointment, that what he and his staff actually succeeded in doing was simply hack into the NPP-USA electronic-mailing system, like burglars, in order to shamelessly “eavesdrop” on the kind of purely internal and private political conversation that regularly goes on among the party’s registered membership abroad.

Yes, no “interception,” whatsoever, took place, for Mr. Archer and his fellow moles never succeeded in their largely imaginary attempt to “prevent” the NPP-USA membership from getting its message across to either President Obama’s White House or the global rhetorical space that is the Internet in general.

You see, the problem with the megalomaniacal operatives of the NDC is that they morbidly gloat in a hallucinatory sense of heroism, thus their incessant need to fatuously use such politically self-intoxicating words as “intercept.”

The truth of the matter, though, is that almost every Ghanaian citizen resident anywhere in the United States, willing to register as a dues-paying member of NPP-USA, could simply get him-/herself signed in to the NPP-USA E-mailing system and almost immediately become a bona fide discussant in this forum. There are no background checks or loyalty tests, which is pretty much in keeping with the democratic spirit of Drs. Joseph Boakye Danquah and Kofi Abrefa Busia; all that is required of the prospective member is either one’s claim to Ghanaian citizenship by birth or naturalization and ancestry.

Anyway, since the Media Committee of NPP-USA, of which I am a delightedly expelled member – and have absolutely no interest in or intention of ever returning – has already eloquently and forcefully responded to the Enquirer’s morbid prank, I would desist from unduly belaboring the issue. Still, about my only mild displeasure with the NPP-USA Media Committee rejoinder is the unnecessarily defensive posture assumed by the party’s Media Committee, almost as if it felt saddled with the patently nonexistent burden of proving its patriotism credentials to the immitigably brutal operators of the NDC political machine and the Ghanaian people at large.

Nonetheless, as even the NPP-USA Media Committee members poignantly observed, the heavily spotty moral and human rights record of the P/NDC is too stark to escape the sedulous attention of the legitimately invested leader of any country with a diplomatic mission in Ghana. It is therefore nothing short of the unforgivably absurd for the clearly diffident NDC hacks to smugly presume that the president of the United States would require any tutoring services from Ghanaians resident in the United States, pro- or anti-NDC, in order to be studiously informed about the lackluster and pathologically vindictive actors of the Atta-Mills government.

*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 the author of 20 books, including “Crosscurrents” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2009). E-mail: [email protected].