Cut the crap, Mr. Comedy Central

The Ghanaweb.com news report had it that Kevin Taylor – also known by me as Mr. Comedy Central – had a lunatic two-hour-plus show on a broadcast station called Loud Silence Radio, in which the John Dramani Mahama-paid agitprop tout claimed, rather characteristically farcically, that the recent transfer of the Minister of State at the Ministry of National Security, Mr. Bryan Acheampong, from his latter post to the Ministry of the Interior by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was because the most dynamic and successful Fourth-Republican Ghanaian leader was fervidly preparing to rig the 2020 Presidential Election (See “Bryan Acheampong Reassigned to Rig Elections – Kevin Taylor” (2/14/20).

It is quite a pity, to speak much less about a shame, that the Washington, DC-based social media commentator did not realize, as well as recognize, the arrant stupidity of his claim, in view of the inescapable fact that both the functional purviews or roles of the Interior and the National Security ministries are strikingly akin to the relationship between conjoined twins or Siamese Twins.

In other words, if, indeed, the main and sole objective for transferring the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Okwawu-Abetifi from the National Security Ministry to the Interior Ministry was to ensure the rigging of the 2020 General Election in favor of the ruling New Patriotic Party, then President Akufo-Addo may very well have egregiously erred in shuffling Mr. Acheampong from the National Security Ministry, where the latter presumably had greater administrative amplitude or powers, than at the Interior Ministry, where his powers and influence will be relatively and significantly circumscribed.

There is another “Fante-astic” stereotypically jocular aspect to this explosively asinine sally as well; which is that, on the one hand, according to Kevin Taylor, Mr. Albert Kan Dapaah, the substantive National Security Minister, is much too smart to be readily manipulated by Nana Akufo-Addo, at the same time that Mr. Taylor also claims that recent events and circumstances in the life of the National Security Minister have rendered Mr. Dapaah much too vulnerable and useless for the latter to be of any significance to a vote-rigging-poised President Akufo-Addo. Truly “Fante-astic,” Dear Reader, isn’t it?

The fact of the matter is that, in the indelible words of his own fellow National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament and the former Mayor of the Accra Metropolis, Dr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, it was former Mahama Presidential Staffer Mr. Samuel George Nartey, who rode herd on or over approximately two-dozen motorbike-riding thugs, dressed in look-alike uniforms of operatives of the National Security Agency (NSA), on January 31, 2019, during the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency Byelection, occasioned by the death of the New Patriotic Party’s parliamentary incumbent, namely, Mr. Emmanuel Kyeremateng Agyarko, and ignited what shortly became widely known as the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Byelection Hostilities.

According to a news report published at the time of the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency Byelection Hostilities, Mr. Samuel George Nartey – aka Sam George – the Ningo-Prampram NDC-MP had been painstakingly warned by Mayor Oko Vanderpuije that it was prohibited by law for any individual or group of individuals to ride recklessly into and around polling stations in the manner in which Mr. Nartey was doing with his gang of NDC-sponsored vigilante thugs. Indeed, but for the timely intervention of the extant Minister of State at the National Security Ministry, Mr. Bryan Acheampong, Mr. Samuel George Nartey and his terror-mongering gang of thugs would have, literally, hijacked the democratic right and entitlement of the bona fide residents of the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency to the parliamentary candidate of their choice and the eventual winner of the ballot, Mrs. Lydia Seyram Alhassan-Agyarko, widow of the deceased parliamentary incumbent.

Now, one does not expect a morally challenged paid party hack and media mercenary like Kevin Taylor to tell his audience of captive and diehard National Democratic Congress’ members, supporters and sympathizers that it was thuggish party goons like Sam George who both instigated and carried out the sort of antisocial mayhem and political hostilities that unconscionable hirelings like Kevin “Comedy Central” Taylor would have Ghanaians and the rest of the world believe were perpetrated by New Patriotic Party-sponsored vigilante thugs and government-sponsored agents from the taxpayer-underwritten National Security Agency. And true to character and expectation, he does not.

The Ghanaweb.com news report, and reporter, may, however, be accurate in suggesting that the transfer of Mr. Acheampong from the National Security Ministry to the Interior Ministry may very well have something to do with personality differences between Mr. Albert Kan Dapaah, the substantive National Security Minister, and his young and professionally agile Ministerial Deputy, as occurred sometime ago, when Mr. Pius Enam Hadzide, the then Deputy Sports Minister, was shuffled from the latter portfolio to his present post of Deputy Information Minister.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: [email protected]