Kufuor Was A Bit Blase About Corruption

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 3, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

The former Chief-of-Staff of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, is quite accurate in his assessment that wild untruths peddled about his former boss' encouragement of the illegal drug trade deeply hurt our putative Gentle Giant. What is incontrovertible, however, is that the former president could have done and said more constructive things to remarkably facilitate a reduction in the volume of illegal drug-trafficking. Instead, he seemed to have given up too early in frustration. He would even later tell a reporter from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that corruption was as old as Adam and Eve.

Of course, such cynical complacency emanated from the fact that Mr. Kufuor increasingly, and aptly, came to see himself as the Midas of Ghana's Fourth Republican political culture (See "Kufuor Was Deeply Hurt By NDC's Cocaine Accusation" Vibeghana.com 11/27/14). President Kufuor's adamant decision to staunchly and blindly back a morally besieged and undefendable Dr. Richard W. Anane did not help matters, in particular the former president's refusal to name a replacement to Dr. Anane's cabinet portfolio for a whole year, until the latter's dubious clearance of charges of corruption and embezzlement by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and his return to his evidently custom-tailored post.

To be certain, Mr. Kufuor's greatest problem was nepotism, not drug-trafficking in the way that Mr. Rawlings and his Abongo Boys are widely known to have provided a safe haven in Ghana for fugitive Latin-American cartel moguls. Even so, I beg to strongly differ with Mr. Mpiani that, somehow, with the Nov. 10, 2014 nabbing of Ms. Nayele Ametefe at London's Heathrow Airport, the proverbial tables have turned against the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress and, in effect, in favor of the Akufo-Addo-led main opposition New Patriotic Party. I also beg to strongly differ because the fractiously and factionally regressive demonization of Nana Akufo-Addo as a refeer-puffing fiend was engineered right among the ranks of the NPP. There are other aspects of the demonic scheme that will be taken up for sober reflection in due course.

What needs to be promptly avoided is the sort of lame and faux-statesmanship that the former Kufuor go-fer is trying to risibly indulge. The fact of the matter is that people very close to President John Dramani Mahama ought to have been directly involved in Nayelegate for the infamous convicted cocaine baroness to have been able to ship out the quantity of contraband in a carryon hand luggage for which the 32-year-old alleged demimonde was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a prison term. Of striking significance is the apparently facile access that the criminal convict reportedly had to the VVIP - or Presidential - Lounge at the Kotoka International Airport. Now, one does not gain easy access to such an exclusive facility without direct access to the most powerful figures of the ruling government.

The nonsensical talk, ad nauseam, of "equalization" also has to be expunged from the political discourse of the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party. There are likely to be criminal activities that occur on the watch of any government in power, irrespective of ideological suasion. How such crises situations are handled and/or managed is what ought to be used to gauge the commitment of the government and party in power to the general quality-of-life concerns of the people. Unwisely pursuing a retaliatory policy of equalization, presumes the normalcy of such leadership lapses or even the downright dereliction of leadership responsibilities.

I also don't see any reason why Mr. Mpiani feels the need for the avoidance of highlighting the obviously forensically sustainable link between Ms. Ametefe and officials at the highest levels of the Mahama government, unless as he has been widely known to have done in the past, Mr. Mpiani is hell-bent on undermining Nana Akufo-Addo's 2016 presidential campaign. Make no mistake, there is practically no dichotomy between the kingpins behind Nayelegate and the Mahama cabinet, unless it can be proven otherwise.

For instance, Ms. Hanna Tetteh's rather lame-brained attempt to literally convert the cocaine contraband couriered by Ms. Ametefe (aka Ruby Adu-Gyamfi), in the wake of the latter's Heathrow Airport arrest on November 10, 2014, into bullion or nuggets of gold speaks volumes about the caliber of the woman presently in charge of our country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At any rate, would Ms. Ametefe's alleged criminal activities have been rendered any less felonious, if the convict had been arrested with 12.5kgs of gold or diamond, instead of commercial-grade cocaine? Dear Reader, you just think about it.

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