Opinions of Monday, 30 November 2015
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 21, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
The scandalous decision by Mr. Sammy Crabbe to impugn the right and integrity of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to indefinitely suspend Mr. Paul A. Afoko, must be interpreted to imply that Mr. Crabbe has tendered his resignation to the party leadership with immediate effect (See “I Support Calls to Reinstate Afoko – Sammy Crabbe” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/9/15). For those of our readers who may not know the man, Mr. Crabbe is the Second-Vice Chairman of the New Patriotic Party. He is also widely known to be a staunch operative of the Kufuor-Kyerematen faction of the party, and was part of the London Gang that risibly attempted to pressure yours truly into trucking with them. That was some six or seven years ago. It was “risible” because yours truly has always been fiercely independent and straight-shooting.
Which essentially explains why the Edweso-/Ejisu-controlled NPP-USA party-machine operatives expelled me from the party some seven years ago, for pointedly carping then-President John Agyekum-Kufuor for nepotism in the appointment of the members of his cabinet. Mr. Crabbe claims that Messrs. Afoko and Kwabena Agyei Agyepong were directly elected by party delegates at the Tamale Congress last year, and therefore the only arm of the party legitimately empowered to remove either man is the same Congress and not “a group of people sitting somewhere for different reasons, as it were, to take their mandate.” I have said this before and hereby repeat the same that it is incumbent upon Atwima Mafia capos like Mr. Crabbe to also explain to the world whether Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong were elected by the delegates of the Tamale Congress to inordinately and deliberately and irrationally and irresponsibly fan the flames of violence that precipitated the acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama. The latter, of course, was the Upper-East’s Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party who was equally elected by congressional delegates to serve in the capacity of which service he was sedulously engaged when he was summarily executed by partisans of the indefinitely suspended Chairman Afoko and General-Secretary Agyepong.
It is quite reasonable to surmise that Mr. Crabbe was complicit in the chain of violent events that led to the brutal acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama. But what is even more significant to underscore here is the fact that the Second-Vice Chairman of the party has clearly and publicly indicated that he has absolutely no regard, whatsoever, for any of the constitutionally and legitimately established bodies of the party charged with regulating the conduct of party executive operatives, both at the local and national levels, such as the National Council (NC), the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Disciplinary Committee (DC) of the New Patriotic Party. What the foregoing means is that in the event of Mr. Freddie Blay’s incapacity to serve as Acting National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Crabbe cannot be counted upon to promptly step in and act responsibly in place of Mr. Blay.
In essence, Mr. Crabbe has absolutely no functional relevance in the New Patriotic Party. At best, he is a veritable nuisance to the agenda and daily activities and affairs of the party. What also needs highlighting more than anything else, is the fact that the Tamale Delegates who voted for Chairman Afoko and General-Secretary Agyepong did not invest these two men with the missionary powers of either engineering or directly causing Mr. Adams Mahama to be cruelly and summarily executed in the thick of Stygian darkness in the vicinity of his own home. We need to also quickly point out that the slain regional party chief was a staunch Akufo-Addo loyalist.
And then just the other day, 37-year-old Mr. Abubakar Saddiq, another Akufo-Addo loyalist, was savagely stabbed to death by suspects alleged to belong to the Agenda 2020 partisans of the New Patriotic Party. This is tragically reminiscent of the Baffoe/Twumasi-Ankrah Affair introverted. The at once predictable and unmistakable reality here, of course, hinges on the fact that the faction of the NPP widely accused of having masterminded the slayings of Messrs. Mahama and Saddiq were also widely known to be sympathetic towards the key operatives of the Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress.