The Road to Kigali Part 4

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

In the quite plausible declaration of the presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) as the winner of the December 7-8, 2012 general election by a legitimately constituted court of law, if Mr. Kakra Essamuah follows up with his threat to support a military coup against the presidency of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, those of us staunch supporters and sympathizers of the NPP may have no other recourse but to immediately demand a geopolitical space of our own under God’s sun and the other planetary systems (See “I Will Support a Coup if Akufo-Addo is Declared President – Kakra Essamuah” Modernghana.com 12/10/12).

Of course, I am talking about the real possibility of a secessionist agitation in much the same way and manner that today the predominantly indigenous African south finds itself healthily separated from the Arab north of the erstwhile Pseudo-Republic of The Sudan. We know this to be a looming possibility because the ruling National Democratic Congress has shamelessly demonstrated now and again that it has absolutely no respect for either the rule of law or the Ghanaian judicial system. We also know for a fact that when it has suited their political interests, the Rawlings-minted NDC has not hesitated to execute Supreme Court judges, as it did on June 30, 1982 under the guise of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (P/NDC).

Anyway, I haven’t yet figured out what the name of our new ethnically organic, albeit culturally diverse, geopolitical space would be called; very likely, like Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and her umbrella-with-eagle dispute with the National Democratic Congress (NDC), we may have to head for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in order to battle for our legitimate reclamation of the name “Ghana,” which was originally bestowed on the erstwhile Gold Coast by Dr. J. B. Danquah, the immortalized Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics. And then, also, we may have to work out a mutually acceptable formula for divvying up the country’s new-found petro-chemical reserves.

Of course, the latter too, like the comprehensive National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), was discovered and developed by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government. But, of course, at this material moment, all the foregoing is sheer speculation. Which is not to say that it could not actually happen. After all, did not the British govern present-day Ghana as three discrete administrative entities until shortly before our independence in 1957?

By the way, who is this Mr. Kakra Essamuah? Well, we are told that he is a member of the so-called National Democratic Congress’ Communication Team. We also know that Mr. Essamuah is morbidly afraid of the great possibility of the Ghana Supreme Court declaring Nana Akufo-Addo winner of Election 2012 on the strength of forensic evidence. And, needless to say, Mr. Essamuah seems to be deathly afraid because deep down his heart and soul, if only he is really possessed of any, it is very possible for a presidential candidate to emerge victorious with the overwhelming support of just two of the ten administrative regions of the country. This is possible because unlike what Mr. Essamuah would have his audience believe, politics, fundamentally speaking, is a veritable game of numbers rather than the sheer number of regions that a candidate is able to carry in an election.

And this is why the poor SOB insists that to legitimately clinch the presidency the flagbearer of any major political party in the country ought to be able to carry at least five of the ten regions of the country. To Mr. Essamuah, the mere fact that Nana Akufo-Addo had not carried the majority vote in the Central Region, from whence the former hails, automatically disqualifies the Eastern Regional native from assuming the presidency. How stupid!

This is what Mr. Essamuah is widely reported to have told Asempa Fm Radio’s “Ekosii Sen” program recently: “If anybody with two regions wants to be president of this country; I, from the Central Region, will support a coup.”

The fact of the matter is that until the Supreme Court of Ghana settles the legal challenge being mounted by the main opposition New Patriotic Party against the Electoral Commission, we cannot be certain that, indeed, as Mr. Essamuah would have the members, supporters and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress believe, Nana Akufo-Addo carried only two of the ten regions of Ghana in the just-concluded questionable Election 2012. There’s the rub, Mr. Essamuah!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 15, 2012
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