Opinions of Friday, 10 June 2016
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
I have decided to restrain the tongue of my pen, because he is on Ground Zero, or the home turf, and thus can see happenings in the country better that I can from my relatively distant perch abroad. I must also hasten to add that as a diehard Christian of Presbyterian heritage, going back to the early 19th century, I have firm belief that religion and religious leaders have an important role to play in the construction and development of every nation, even in modern postcolonial states like Ghana.
However, such leadership, as is widely acknowledged to have been preordained by Divine Providence, ought to be wielded or maintained with great responsibility and even-mindedness. This is where I envisage the leader of the Glorious Waves Church International to be in egregious breach of his moral authority and confidence with the people. For instance, as staunchly attested by the Supreme Court in the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, where was Prophet Emmanuel Badu-Kobi when the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress bulldozed its way to victory by criminally packing our National Voters’ Register with a remarkable percentage of foreign citizens? Was this also part of the Divine Prophecy that the founder of Glorious Waves, as the church of popularly known, claims to have been receiving from God? (See “I Saw NPP Shooting and Creating Problems, After Elections – Prophet Kobi” GhanaPoliticsOnline.com /Modernghana.com 6/5/16).
It also strange that Prophet Badu-Kobi has yet to comment on the bloody past of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), including the brutal assassination of Accra High Court judges exclusively on grounds of ethnicity and ideological suasion, and not because these slain judges had committed any abominable crimes for which they deserved to be abducted from the homes and families and summarily executed Mafia style. Even assuming that, indeed, Justices Sarkodie, Agyepong and Koranteng-Addow had committed any acts of felony or high treason, wouldn’t it only have been fair and just for them to have been afforded the inalienable opportunity to defend themselves in a legitimately constituted court of law?
Prophet Badu-Kobi clearly seems to be only interested in deep-sixing or railroading the leadership ambitions of the three-time Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Needless to say, as a political figure, the character of Akufo-Addo, as well as his conduct, may be remarkably flawed. But equally flawed is the character of President John Dramani Mahama and the rest of the leadership of the ruling National Democratic Congress. For instance, what has Prophet Badu-Kobi got to say about the scandalous official conduct of pathological scofflaws like Messrs. Edward Omane-Boamah and Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, who flagrantly and criminally thumbed their noses at the Supreme Court’s order to return the legitimately acquired landed and real-estate properties of the late Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, the former National Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party?
Messrs. Okuzdeto-Ablakwa and Omane-Boamah would thumb their noses at the apex court with the overt and very public complicity of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, also deceased. If, indeed, he really wants Ghanaians to know why Akufo-Addo lost two straight presidential elections back-to-back, Prophet Badu-Kobi would have equally questioned why Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, the Electoral Commissioner, staunchly backed by the leadership of the National Democratic Congress, has flatly refused to clean up the National Voters’ Register by expunging the names of persons who registered to vote by the illegitimate use of their National Health Insurance (NHIS) cards? And if he had also cared to ask Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the NDC’s General-Secretary, he would have learned to either his great amusement or delight that Akufo-Addo’s polling agents had not been vigilant enough.
Rather, Prophet Badu-Kobi appears to prefer to bury his head and conscience in the proverbial sands of cultivated ignorance by pretending as if there was something psychically and psychologically amiss with Nana Akufo-Addo. The founding leader of Glorious Waves must also be fully aware of the fact that most the guns and bullets so far intercepted by Ghana’s border guards have crossed into the country from the NDC stronghold of the Volta Region, to wit, Aflao; and yet Prophet Badu-Kobi has been smugly, luridly and hypocritically chanting “All-Die-Be-Die,” fully aware of the fact that no other major political party in the country has the unenviably bloody political track-record of the National Democratic Congress.
And so who is this so-called Prophet Emmanuel Badu-Kobi? A Saint or Satan?
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs