The Road to Kigali – Part 15

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

I have in hand two articles both of which tackle different aspects of Election 2012. They are both characteristically terse and had originally been posted to Ghanaweb.com; they are also both sourced to JoyOnline.com, the country’s leading multimedia organization. I once had my poems featured on Joy-Fm Radio during the summer of 1998, when Mr. Gabby Adjetey was either the station manager or program manager, I forget which, and Naana Danquah and Akosua Larbi were Anchor-DJ and Anchor-Newscaster, respectively.

And then either early this year or late last year, I forget exactly when, I got called and interviewed by phone on the gay-lesbian-bisexual and transsexual question by a Joy-Fm reporter. Interestingly, I have yet to have any of this series published in the opinion columns of that leading media organization which, by the way, I have recently learned from a reliable source, is owned by a relative of my Kyebi-Adadientem Clan, which also reminded me of a series of e-mails that I received several weeks ago from a guy calling himself Jack Asumadu, who claimed to be married to an Akyem woman, very likely a relative, and went on to remind us Akyem of how “dirt-poor and nobodies but insufferably arrogant” we are. Jack Asumadu, whom I never even knew existed, claimed to be living in Worcester, Massachusetts, and also reminded me of my nobody status at the community college where I teach in New York State’s Long Island, in Garden City, to be precise; he also listed the names of my Auntie Danquah and my cousin (actually uncle) Kwame Tieku, of Syracuse, New York and proceeded to heap abuse upon abuse on them, all because Nana Akufo-Addo has rightly refused to concede Election 2012 to President John Dramani Mahama. Jack Asumadu, who also claims to be working for one of the Carnegie-Mellon institutions as a researcher, wanted me to understand that whether Akyems like it or not, Ghana now has an “Otani” president. Well, I reminded the bastard that while he was still in diapers and eating garbage in Asumagya, or wherever it is he comes from, I was a Ford Foundation Undergraduate Fellow/Scholar at the City College of the City University of New York. I also promised to expose his uppity-Nigger arrogance to the rest of the world in bits and pieces as I am doing right now.

Anyway, I cannot be certain that the apparent decision not to post any of my “Road to Kigali” series has anything political verging on censorship to do with it. I mean, the rather risible and ineffectual idea that truth suppressed long enough will eventually go away, be lost and forgotten by the teeming masses of the Ghanaian electorate, even as Stygian evil comfortably thrives, conquers and effectively controls all the land together with lies paraded under the guise of gospel truths.

Well, the first of the articles that I would like to discuss here is rather brief. It runs only about four sentences in four brief paragraphs in which the fraudulently declared winner of Election 2012 and incumbent Ghanaian president is reported to be urging his countrymen and women to put the bitterly fought recent general election behind them and “forge ahead to build[ing] a united country” (See “President Mahama: Put Elections Behind You” Ghanaweb.com 12/16/12). Rather fine and conciliatory words, were the reader to ask me. The grim fact of reality, though, is that words are one thing and deeds are another. And anybody who studiously followed Election 2012 cannot sincerely conclude that President Mahama had the unity of the nation at heart, let alone the organic and harmonious development of the same.

Indeed, watching and listening to him campaign in the northern-half of the country, the critical observer and thinker would have thought both halves of Ghana were poles apart, with a mahogany fence of bitter enmity serving as the geographical divide. I guess what I am clearly trying to imply here is that for Mr. Mahama, winning Election 2012 at all costs was far more significant than unifying the “damn” country for a common and purposeful agenda; and the latter is, of course, generously assuming that indeed the man has any such progressive agenda for the development of the entire country. Nothing could be farther from the truth. And if the past three-and-half years of the Mills-Mahama government are any credible benchmark to go by, then I pity the destiny of my beloved motherland, and fatherland, of course!

Where I unreservedly concur with Mr. Mahama’s speech before the Women Aglow Ministry, however, is his observation that “Ghana needs the intervention of God” to enable us smoothly negotiate the current phase of our nation’s history, although I am not quite sure that Divine Providence would so lightly deign to truck with a rowdy and bawdy bunch of impenitent Satanists who consciously and subconsciously thrive on reckless acts of murder and untold mayhem against their most formidable political and ideological opponents. Of course, on the latter count, I squarely and painfully have in mind the yet to be resolved massacre and grisly beheadings on the Agbogbloshie Market not quite a while ago, in which citizens known to be either supporters and/or sympathizers of the main opposition New Patriotic Party were callously and viciously subjected to the National Democratic Congress’ version of the Apocalypse.

I also don’t know that cynically crediting God with the conduct of an election that most Ghanaians, including even key figures of the National Democratic Congress, are convinced was rigged beyond fairness and justice does the country any good. At best, it embarrassingly projects the image of a country composed of the morally blind and incurably godless.

Indeed, even as Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the New Patriotic Party’s Minority Leader in Parliament, aptly pointed out, the kind of discrepancies evinced in the collation of the votes in the country’s just-ended general election does not augur well for the healthy development of an enviable democratic culture in the country (See “150,000 Extra Votes Were Given to Mahama – NPP Claims” Ghanaweb.com 12/16/12). I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that come December 27th Instant, the real cause and democratic choice of Ghanaian leadership, as intended by God, will be clearly made manifest through the verdict of the Supreme Court. Ultimate victory belongs to the people of God!

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

Dec. 25, 2012 ###