Then It Was Wrong, Ken Agyapong...

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 27, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

It is contradictory for Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong to, on the one hand, endorse the decision of party General-Secretary Kwabena Agyapong to fire Mr. Perry Okudzeto as the Director of Communications for the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), and on the other hand, note that the process by which Mr. Okudzeto was let go constituted the wrongful aspect of such firing (See "Agyepong Never Erred in 'Sacking' Perry - Ken Agyapong" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/21/14).

The process that the outspoken Assin-Central NPP-MP is talking about regards the fact that the General-Secretary either woefully failed or flatly refused to communicate his decision to the Steering Committee of the New Patriotic Party. It is also not clear whether all that Mr. Agyapong, the NPP scribe, that is, needed to do was to have merely communicated his decision to dislodge Mr. Okudzeto from his Communications Director's position to the NPP Steering Committee, which would then have merely rubber-stamped the decision as a done deal.

I raise this question because Mr. Opare Hammond, who has recently been similarly besieged, has publicly asserted that all persons holding the administrative position of "Director" cannot be summarily dismissed without the express consent and approval of the NPP Steering Committee. I am quite certain that the quality of one's job performance, rather than the mere fact of how long one has been working without taking a leave of absence, would have been the salient basis upon which the NPP steering committee would have based its approval or rejection of the General-Secretary's decision to remove Mr. Okudzeto from his post.

In the case of Mr. Opare Hammond, who is also a former NPP-MP, the Steering Committee flatly rejected Chairman Paul Afoko's decision to oust the party's Director of Finance and Administration. As of this writing, Mr. Kwabena Agyapong had publicly announced that he would be doubling up as NPP Director of Communications until a replacement had been found for Mr. Okudzeto.

What I am driving at here is that unless the Assin-Central MP has reliable evidence pointing towards the gross administrative incompetence of Okudzeto, there is absolutely no justification for the Oman-Fm Radio proprietor to so cavalierly assume that Mr. Okudzeto's ousting by Mr. Kwabena Agyapong was done in good faith or without prejudice. I, for my part, have been primarily concerned about the goings-on at the NPP headquarters because Election 2016 is just around the corner, and Chairman Afoko and General-Secretary Agyapong could not candidly claim not to require every productive hand on deck, as it were, in order to ensure that the New Patriotic Party resumes its well-deserved and long-overdue occupation of the Flagstaff House.

In other words, vindictively alienating at least one-half of the core membership of the New Patriotic Party is the last strategy that ought to be on the agenda of Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong.

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