Opinions of Saturday, 10 November 2018
Columnist: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In the wake of the nasty fallout from the alleged misuse of taxpayer money by the Director-General of the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), Mr. Kwame Owusu, Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong was widely reported to have said that he would have said worse things than the man at the center of the proverbial eye-of-the-storm said at a hastily organized press conference in indefensibly ignoble defense of himself in the wake of the media fanfare that attended the aforesaid allegation (See “I Would Have Said Worst[sic] Things – Ken Agyapong” Adomonline.com / Modernghana.com 11/6/18).
The fact of the matter is that the GMA’s D-G did not acquit himself creditably and/or honorably at the press conference that he hastily organized, during which he royally embarrassed the man who appointed him to his quite significant and very sensitive post, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. It is quite clear to any studious follower of this particular set of circumstances that by the end of the criminal investigations being currently conducted by the agents of the Economic and Organized Crimes Organization (EOCO), Mr. Owusu would be thoroughly cleared of any wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, the way and manner in which this otherwise very successful and well-known New York City Chartered Accountant deported himself in the wake of the aforementioned allegations, definitely left much to be desired, if only because Mr. Owusu let his pride and apparent arrogance take over his common sense and emotional maturity. For instance, he could have wisely retained the services of a corporate attorney or even the Public Relations Department of the Ghana Maritime Authority, if it has one. It is also rather disingenuous for Mr. Agyapong, the hip-shooting New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, to pontifically, albeit vacuously, pretend to be on the side of Mr. Owusu because, clearly, he is not.
And it is simply because it was the well-known media mogul who cynically mentored Mr. Kwame Asare Obeng, the Hiplife “scam” artist, who first posted the criminal mendacity with which the image and reputation of the GMA’s Director-General are being so savagely assaulted on his Facebook Wall and caused the same to spiral out of control. If anything at all, what Mr. Agyapong ought to be doing is to be unreservedly and publicly apologizing to Mr. Owusu, if, indeed, as the “Mayor of Kencity” claims, he and the GMA’s Director-General are really good and fast friends. After all, it is not for nothing that our ancestral sages of yore are routinely quoted to have observed as follows: “Your best friend may very well be your fiercest foe.”
You see, cavalierly claiming that Mr. Owusu does not own the hotel in which the GMA’s end-of-year party was held is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Owusu is widely known to be quite wealthy enough to be capable of owning a hotel and has, in fact, publicly claimed at his press conference to be the proprietor of the Luxe Suites Hotel.
The real problem here is the apparently invariable obsession of our largely well-to-do and professionally successful executive operatives and politicians with being officially housed in taxpayer- or state-owned bungalows for free, while they greedily rent out their privately-owned homes to resident foreign diplomats and entrepreneurs for dollars and pounds sterling.
With such abject lack of any sacrificial desire to see the country progress and remarkably prosper, is there any reason for any well-meaning and levelheaded Ghanaian not to be despondent about the steadily standstill level and trajectory of our country’s progress and material development?
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