Victor Owusu was once an Nkrumaist

Most members of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition may not know this, but in June 1949 when the future President Kwame Nkrumah split with the leadership of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), among the youths of the country's seminal or first broad-based political party who deserted the UGCC with Nkrumah was 29-year-old Mr. Victor Owusu.

Indeed, it was primarily for this reason, and others that I may not yet be privy to, of course, that Mr. R. R. Amponsah never forgave or trusted the Victor Owusu-led Popular-Front Party (PFP) in 1979 and decided to truck with the William “Paa Willie” Ofori-Atta-led United National Convention (UNC).

So it is rather amusing for Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, the longtime Chief-of-Staff of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor to be smugly questioning the bona fides or loyalties of the newly elected National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, merely because Mr. Freddie Blay was first a stalwart of the rump-Convention People's Party (r-CPP) before he crossed both the ideological and parliamentary carpet to join the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “Dan Botwe Berates Mpiani for Questioning Blay's Loyalty” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 9/6/18).

Those of my readers who have also read my political biography titled “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (2005) may be aware of Mr. Owusu's treachery.

Indeed, quite a number of the sharp differences that the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics had with then-President Nkrumah in the early 1960s that led to Dr. Danquah's arrest and detention and, finally, his deftly orchestrated prison-assassination in February 1965, had to do with riotous misbehavior instigated on the streets and alleyways of Kumasi by a rambunctious and insufferably unruly Mr. Victor Owusu.

I have one or two of such incidents documented in the aforementioned political biography. So it is nothing short of the unpardonably absurd for anybody, least of all Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, to presume to be endowed with an enviable pedigree that ought to make political crossovers like Mr. Blay feel diffident and out-of-place among the ranks of the leadership of the New Patriotic Party.

I have said this before that contrary to what reprobate political schemers like Messrs. Mpiani and Stephen Ntim would have the rest of us believe, there was a Lawyer Blay among the first distinguished personalities who met in the Sekondi-Takoradi office of Mr. George Alfred “Paa” Grant to lay down the breastwork for the foundation and establishment of the United Gold Coast Convention.

Indeed, as I vividly recall, a little over 10 years ago when he decided to cross over from the rump-CPP to the NPP, Mr. Blay categorically noted that he ought not to ever have crossed ideological lines to become a member of the CPP, to begin with, because at least one of the founding fathers of the UGCC was his ancestor.

And thus far, within the relatively short time that he has been a vanguard member of the NPP, Mr. Blay has more than amply demonstrated that he absolutely defers to no one, least of all, Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, when it comes to a test of loyalty and demonstrated leadership and courage under fire, literally speaking.

It is also interesting that his abiding grudge against Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for simply being the nephew of Mr. William “Paa Willie” Ofori-Atta and all, former President John Agyekum-Kufuor has never mustered the courage to explain to the rest of us precisely how it came about that Mr. Reginald Reynolds Amponsah, the man whom he once eulogized as one of the dozen or so greatest Ghanaian freedom fighters in the twentieth century, decided to part ways with Mr. Kufuor's political icon by joining the Ofori-Atta-led United National Convention in 1979, instead of the Victor Owusu-led Popular-Front Party, even when it became quite obvious that Paa Willie did not have the proverbial Chinaman's Chance at clinching the presidency in 1979.

I have been told by a close relative of Mr. Mpiani's that so pathologically vindictive and litigious that Mr. Kufuor's longtime right-hand man is not on speaking terms with a remarkable number of his own relatives. He had better be prepared be prepared to duke it out with the denizens of, you know what I am talking about.

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