"Sir John" Is Right On Bawumia!

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

An avid reader of my columns just brought to my attention the fact that Mr. Paul Afoko is vying for the post of National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and not the post of NPP General-Secretary, as I wrote in my article titled "Afoko Must Be Allowed To Contest" (Modernghana.com 2/18/14). I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Mr. Dickson Amoah (aka Nana Yaw) for promptly bringing my attention to this inadvertent error.

The focus of this article, however, is on Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor's very bitter carping of Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie (aka Sir John) vis-a-vis the latter's decision to staunchly back the presidential candidacy of Dr. Mahammudu Bawumia, in the event of Nana Akufo-Addo's deciding not to take a third shot at the presidency (See "Sir John Erred In Endorsing Dr. Bawumia - Amoako-Tuffuor" Citifmonline.com 2/18/14).

The fact of the matter is that Sir John was merely affirming a position that he has been holding for quite a long while now. What is obvious, and risibly so, however, is that Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor is being predictably disingenuous and mischievous within the same breath. Clearly, he appears to have a candidate other than the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana in mind. I have a clear picture of who that personality might be; but for the nonce, I prefer to hold my fire until it becomes necessary to put the subject in question up, once again, for the relevant discussion.

In short, what I am suggesting here is that in conditionally predicating his unreserved endorsement of Dr. Bawumia as one that is contingent on Nana Akufo-Addo's decision on whether or not to contest the 2016 presidential election, Sir John clearly seems to have preempted whatever intentions rear-guard tacticians like Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor may have up their sleeves by way of tossing a monkey wrench into the process, in due course, in a devious bid to unwisely and regressively taking us back to the sort of avoidable bad blood and bloodbath that characterized Election 2008, at the center of which, you guessed right, stood Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor.

To be certain, good politics is squarely about strategizing in salutary anticipation of the unexpected by staking out a Plan B and even a Plan C, in case of events not panning out as often expected in the labile realm of human affairs. Indeed, it is in this realm of the pragmatic and foresighted that much of contemporary African political culture may be aptly envisaged to seriously lag behind that of the West, as well as one or two other regions around the globe.

Thus on the preceding score, Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor cannot be taken seriously when he admonishes his fellow NPP-ites that "We must get to the river before we cross it, rather than jumping and jumping into another controversial situation." Needless to say, Sir John is actually more than ten steps ahead of Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor's rather curious trend of thinking. The progressive way, of course, is that you anticipate the problem by trouble-shooting and embarking on the trip with the necessary tools, in case of an emergency, rather than heading out blindly and then waiting for an emergency situation to rear its proverbial ugly head before strategizing on how to tackle the same. Very likely, it well may be too late then. This is what is called ad-hoc, ex-post-facto or retroactive thinking.

It is this kind of ultra-conservative thinking, unsavorily represented by Dr. Amoako-Tuffuor, that is making it so difficult for the NPP to get ahead of the NDC, and thus move Ghana steadily towards the progressive course of rapid technological, political, socioeconomic and cultural development.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Jan. 19, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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