Is the NDC hoarding scandals?

I have been studiously observing events on Ghana’s political terrain for more than two decades now, and can vouch that it is only the key operatives of the present main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) who have perfected what amounts to a fine art out of the creation and trucking of scandals and legion acts of moral outrages, including kidnappings and abductions of foreign nationals, even while pontifically professing to staunchly uphold the progressive principles of “Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice.”

At the same time, the Chief Architect of the June 4th Revolution, so-called, to wit, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, has been ironically, albeit self-righteously, lamenting to those who would listen that he has singularly produced perhaps the most thoroughgoing corrupt crop of politicians in Ghana’s postcolonial era, as to make the leaders of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), led by the brutally slain Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, the leader of the National Redemption Council (NRC) and Supreme Military Council (SMC-I) juntas, cut the near-perfect figures of angels.

So, it comes as inexcusably absurd for Prof. Ransford Gyampo, the University of Ghana’s political scientist, who was recently caught on videotape in what was described by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as an unwarranted solicitation for sex from one of his female students in exchange for good grades, to accuse the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of “hoarding scandals” involving leaders of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), which operatives of the ruling party have belatedly decided to release into the mainstream of media fare in a strategic bid to trouncing their most formidable political opponents in the leadup to the 2020 general election (See “Airbus Saga: Stop Hoarding Scandals to Release During Election Years – Prof. Gyampo” Ghanaweb.com 2/4/20).

It is absurd because last Friday’s European Airbus SE Scandal that made the breaking-news headlines around the world was not deliberately or strategically belatedly orchestrated by the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party.

Rather, it was released to the media by the judge and the prosecutors of a London-based Serious Fraud High Court in the wake of a pretrial settlement that ended with Airbus pleading culpable of paying huge sums of money in bribery to government officials in at least some five Third-World countries to unduly influence the airplane manufacture and sales industry.

To be certain, Ghana was named in media reports as only one of five countries uncovered to-date some of whose government officials, between 2009 and 2015, were heavily paid off to ensure that Airbus SE edged other aircraft-manufacturing companies out of the break-neck race of the manufacture and sale of aircraft. The other four countries named alongside with Ghana are Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Taiwan. It is actually the National Democratic Congress’ leaders, among them Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the party’s dynastic General-Secretary, Mr. Sammy Gyamfi, and Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the party’s Communications Officer, and National Chairman, respectively, who have been springing up violent crimes and forging official documents in a seditious bid to destabilizing the country and in a chimerical “Boot-for-Boot” bid to illegally and criminally wresting power from the democratically elected Akufo-Addo Administration.

Indeed, about the only thing that any expert on Ghana’s political culture can legitimately fault President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo with being guilty of is the rather relatively far benign but, nevertheless, curiously and nauseatingly lethargic manner in which scandals like that which inextricably involved the double-salary scamming of Ghanaian taxpayers by cabinet appointees of the previous John Dramani Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress have been handled, almost as if such patently criminal acts were the inalienable right of Ghanaian politicians, especially politicians affiliated with the National Democratic Congress.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: [email protected]