Talensi, Police And Ghanaian Politics

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 12, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

We are roughly the same age. Actually, he may be a couple of years older than I am, but Mr. Dan Botwe may be scandalously naive about the dynamics of Ghanaian politics and the reprehensibly politicized nature of the Ghana Police Service. I was also amused to "hear" the New Patriotic Party's Member of Parliament for Okere Constituency call the Talensi police a professionally savvy lot. I almost fell off my chair with uncontrollable laughter (See "Conduct of Upper-East Police Shocking - Dan Botwe" Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/4/15). I mean, you would not call the most unprepossessing woman you were trying to cadge cheap sex from the prettiest woman you have ever met, would you? And so how Mr. Botwe arrived at the conclusion that the Talensi police were the most professionally disciplined of their kind in the country boggles the mind, my mind, that is.

He could have readily Googled to find out what happened in 1960 to the pro tem Danquah-led United Party (UP) presidential-election campaign (See Dennis Austin's Politics in Ghana: 1946-1960). Fanatical Nkrumaist wags prefer to smugly spit out the "canonical" fabrication of the Show Boy's having resoundingly trounced his former mentor by 90-percent to 10-percent. I have often maintained that even in those "benighted" days, you would have had a hard time convincing even the most retarded Ghanaian citizen that an increasingly autocratic and imperialistic Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah had a humongous 90-percent of the country's citizenry on his side. You just try to perform a linguistic analysis of the name "Convention People's Party" and see what you come up with.

There is this apocryphal joke about the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics drawing his former protege aside and sardonically, albeit charitably, whispering into his ears: "Kwame stop embarrassing Ghanaians before the global community. Come on, 'Convention' is the same as 'Party.' What is all this nonsense about 'Convention People's Party'?" Of course, Nkroful Kofi-Kwame Show Boy would never forgive the Adadientem thinker and foremost prophet of Ghanaian political destiny.

In the 1960 presidential election, to ensure his predictable victory was clinched beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt, Prime Minister Nkrumah issues a decree prohibiting the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) from accepting any campaign jingles from any political party, other than the ruling Convention People's Party. Those who complain bitterly about Mr. Komla Gbedemah and other CPP-leaning political parties being proscribed by the Kotoka-led National Liberation Council (NLC) ought to be humbled by the preceding fact (See Austin's Politics In Ghana). The same decree would also prohibit the leaders of the main opposition United Party from using vehicles owned by the party in propagating their campaign platform agenda. This is the sort of democratic regime that the Nkrumacrats would have Ghanaians glorify and exult in and feverishly yearn to return to.

Well, whether the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress recognize this or not, the fact of the matter is that the NDC is a striking replica of the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party. We saw the true colors of the CPP's avatar on Sunday, July 5, when the Talensi police mischievously collaborated with forces aligned with the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress to summarily deny the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party the pre-requested and pre-approved use of a public park for their final campaign rally. The NDC National Organizer, Mr. Kofi Adams, claims that his party had requested the same Tongo Park venue for the same purpose on the same day some sixteen days earlier.

The relevant question here is not who is being mischievously "economical with the truth," as Mr. Botwe, the former Information Minister under President John Agyekum-Kufuor, suggested but rather, why Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Thomas Agbanyo, the Upper-East Police's Public Relations Officer (PRO), knowing fully well that Tongo Park had been pre-requested by operatives of the ruling party, nonetheless, go ahead to officially permit Nana Akufo-Addo and his men and women the use of the same public space at the same time? Well, thinly veiled sarcasm and all, Mr. Botwe has every right and luxury to associate Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Alhassan's boys and girls with professionalism, but I am not buying any of this.

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