"Recalled" And "Sacked" Are Two Sides of the Same Beast

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

October 3, 2014

E-mail: [email protected]

In the few media photographs that I have seen of him, largely on the Internet, he is proudly attired in what clearly appears to be designer suit jackets and stiff-standing shirt collars. And so I guess one can legitimately conclude that the former National Democratic Congress' Member of Parliament (NDC-MP) for the Adentan district/constituency of Central Accra thinks very highly of himself. Which is why Mr. Kwadwo Adu-Asare also appears to be having such a hard time coming to terms with the crystal-clear fact that he was given the sack or, better yet, the boot - dear reader take your pick - when President John Dramani Mahama recently recalled him to the Flagstaff House, to keep time with the teeming pool of sinecured Abongo Boys or, if you will, the jaded "senior" foot-soldiers called "presidential staffers" (See "Adu Asare Dismisses Sack Claims" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/29/14).

These days, almost every one of the non-Fante Akan "Kwadwos" has been "Fantecized" into "Kojos." Thus, for example, Kumasi's own Mayor Kwadwo Bonsu, a direct scion of Asante royalty, has morphed into "Kojo" Bonsu. And like all the others, he is not known to have made any attempt to correct our largely "sub-ethnic" illiterate reporters and journalists. While I was growing up, they used to proudly and affectionately call them "pen-pushers." I am not quite sure these days, though, whether "Soli-Pushers" or "Soli-Solicitors" is or is not the more apt descriptive for the sort of stomach-oriented hacks who hog the bulk of media websites and radio and television stations in the country with reckless abandon and inexplicable pride.

Still, I am well-convicted that it is about time that Mr. Adu Asare got told to the face, as New Yorkers are wont to say, that the verb "recall," when used in connection with someone's political performance, invariably means that the subject of recall is inescapably envisaged to be damaged goods by those who appointed him/her to the post/portfolio from which s/he is being recalled.

At any rate, Brother Kwadwo couldn't soundly convince those of us who know far better than the constituents he is so hell-bent on hoodwinking, that when one is abruptly yanked from the master-bedroom into the outhouse (or backyard bucket- or pit-latrine), the latter positional change is in any way, shape, form or manner tantamount to a promotion. I mean, what kind of job promotion entails the summary removal of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a pork-barrel or "sikadicious" organization like the so-called Youth Enterprise Support (YES) Fund to a subsidiary of the same? And the subsidiary we are talking about, of course, is none other than the so-called Youth Enterprise Development (YED).

Mr. Adu Asare's rather risible claim is that his patent demotion to YED CEO has been roundly, or effectively, neutralized by the fact that his sinecured new job description at the Flagstaff House presently is "Presidential Staffer." Well, if I may politely ask of the retired Adentan "honorably dishonorable" whether, indeed, a presidential staffer is functionally and fundamentally any different from Mr. Mahama's well-fed and clothed houseboy. 

You see, a real promotion would have entailed Mr. Adu Asare's being bumped upstairs into one of those ministerial portfolios, even as one of the legion half-educated deputies of one of the big boys and girls of Little Dramani. In other words, I don't, for example, fathom Mr. Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah attempting to fool anybody into believing that a change of workplace, or station, from Minister of Youth and Sports to the obviously face-saving and heel-cooling presidential staffer, is the political equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Sterling Leadership. Tweaakai!