Has Konadu-Rawlings Ever Learned to Accept Criticism Herself?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 30, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

She never ceases to annoy me. I am, of course, talking about Ghana’s longest-reigning First Lady, Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. Just the other day, while inaugurating the executive membership of the Volta Regional Branch of her so-called National Democratic Party (NDP), the pathologically megalomaniacal wife of the equally megalomaniacal Chairman Jerry John Rawlings was reported to have castigated President John Dramani Mahama for having, supposedly, presided over “some of the worst crimes the nation has ever witnessed” (See “Parliaments Under Mills, Mahama Supervised Unspeakable Crimes – Konadu” Modernghana.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/30/15). Mrs. Rawlings also reportedly went on to virulently accuse the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, her husband’s former arch-lieutenant, of having presided over “unspeakable crimes.”

Maybe somebody ought to ask Nana Konadu what crimes committed by any group of Ghanaian officials in government could be deemed to have been worse or more “unspeakable” than Chairman Rawlings’ decision, in collaboration with the Tsikata Brothers, to unconscionably abduct and savagely execute the three Akan-descended Accra High Court judges and the retired Ghana Army major on June 30, 1982? The last thing that any levelheaded Ghanaian citizen would want to do is go to bat, as it were, for clinical scoundrels and veritable political scam-artists like Presidents John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama. Still, the wicked irony of Mrs. Rawlings’ tirade cannot escape any Ghanaian who is old enough to remember the bloody political events of June 4, 1979 and, again, from December 31, 1981 up to January 2001, when the suavely civilianized President Jerry John Rawlings handed over the reins of governance to a democratically elected President John Agyekum-Kufuor.

The Akan have a maxim which tersely and poignantly runs as follows: “A crab does not beget a bird.” In sum, if, indeed, Presidents Atta-Mills and Dramani Mahama supervised the worst of political crimes against Ghanaian humanity, as Mrs. Rawlings claims, this is primarily because these two Ghanaian leaders were meticulously and systematically tutored by Chairman Rawlings, in whose extortionate National Democratic Congress party and government the two men cut their political teeth, as it were. We must also point out, for the benefit of those of our readers who were either not born or were too young to remember, that the Justice Azu-Crabbe-chaired Special Investigations Board (SIB), that was charged with enquiring into the brutal assassination of the judges, published a report that clearly indicated that Mrs. Rawlings was in the know about this most heinous crime against humanity. We were, for instance, told that the keys to the “Black Maria” van used in the abduction of the judges had been taken from the kitchen table of the Rawlingses and, more importantly, that it was personally from Nana Konadu that the aforesaid keys had been accessed.

I mean, when we talk about the Rawlingses and the entire hoodlum pack that constitutes the so-called National Democratic Congress, we are actually talking about cold-calculating butchers on the order of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. I am also not the least bit amused to hear Mrs. Rawlings presume to admonish President Mahama to learn to take public criticism of his administrative performance in stride, and even deem such caviling of his government to be an incentive towards making him a better leader. Maybe time has so comfortably deadened the memory capacity of Mrs. Rawlings, or whatever may be left of the same, as to make Chairman Rawlings’ faithful-partner-in-crime forget about the slew of journalists she and her husband packed onto fleets of “Black Marias” bound for Nsawam and other prison destinations around the country, often charged with libeling and defaming the bloody couple.

Indeed, nearly every reputable Ghanaian journalist 55 years and above has served a prison sentence for criticizing one of the Rawlingses. And the bloody couple have even attempted to extend the reach of their atrocities beyond the shores of Ghana. Just a little over a year ago, for example, a Ms. Rosemary Forson, presumably an assign or proxy for Mrs. Rawlings, brought yours truly up on charges of sexual harassment and “ageism,” or age discrimination, on grounds of an article he wrote fairly commenting on a news report detailing how Mrs. Rawlings used a Chinese company to defraud the Ghanaian taxpayer of more than $4 million. I shall reserve other details about these outrageous charges for discussion at a later date.