Opinions of Tuesday, 8 December 2015
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 29, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
Kofi Adams is either confused or he knows something about the November 23 raid of the headquarters of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that the National Organizer of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not telling the rest of the nation. The former Rawlings errand boy had better come clean, and promptly so, before he plunges the entire country into an irreversible and irreparable crisis (See “PPP Now [More] Attractive than NPP – Kofi Adams” DailyHeritageOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/29/15). For starters, Mr. Adams claims that some “powerful people” in the NPP are behind the raid. He ought to tell the nation who those “powerful people” are, and also how he came by this piece of information.
It ought to be clear to Ghanaian voters by now that the NPP headquarters raid, as already indicated by Mr. Freddie Blay, Acting Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, may very well have been orchestrated by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress, with the certain complicity of New Patriotic Party insiders. As of this writing, it had been reported that some of the armed raiders had been arrested by the police and were awaiting indictment and prosecution. We shall be closely watching. Indeed, as is characteristic with this brazen and craven political opportunist, Mr. Adams did not spare a moment to make a lurid comparison between the Nduom-owned and operated Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and the most formidable political opponent to the National Democratic Congress.
For those of our readers who may not know this, the PPP is a breakaway faction of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP), which in itself is an oblique offshoot of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP). What I am trying to get at here is that ideologically speaking, there is absolutely no difference between the rump-CPP, the PPP and the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress. All three political organizations are populist and Left-leaning. And all avid watchers of the Fourth-Republican political scene can readily attest to the fact that the NDC has been making inordinate capital out of many of the perceived achievements of President Nkrumah and his proto-Convention People’s Party regime. Recently, for instance, the National Democratic Congress, then led by the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills, issued an executive edict proclaiming and institutionalizing the purported birthday of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah as a national holiday.
Those of us who watched ballot boxes and Biometric Voters’ Registration forms recklessly destroyed during the latest National Democratic Congress’ primaries, can honestly and objectively testify to the fact that many an NDC operative has absolutely no qualms, whatsoever, vandalizing public property. It is therefore nothing short of the farcically laughable to hear Mr. Adams put up the following plainly retarded defense for the Mahama government: “We are in government and if something happens, we are the same people who will spend money to fix the mess. And so why should we involve ourselves in this petty situation?” Well, he may have been too young to have witnessed this, but Mr. Adams would do himself and his generation a lot of good to research the inglorious history of what widely became known as “Shit-Bombing” under the tenure of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, when the now-President John Dramani Mahama was Communications Minister.
Mr. Adams would also do himself a lot of instructive good to focus on the central role played by his present boss in the “Shit-Bombing” episode, in particular as to whether the NDC government at the time compensated the victims whose properties were savagely shit-bombed. You see, Mr. Adams, you are not nearly half as smart as you think you are. Anyway, I was just perusing the contents of a short news article captioned “I Pray for Mahama – Dr. Bawumia” (MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/5/15), in which was reported an interview that the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana granted Joy News’ Mr. Latif Iddris at his home. In the aforesaid interview, Dr. Bawumia was reported to have said that he prayed daily for the man whom he, together with Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, is so determined to evict from the Flagstaff House come January 2017.
Well, this story set me thinking analogically about the way that a poultry farmer fattens a cockerel or turkey which he then delightfully slaughters at Christmas or, in the case of Alhaji Bawumia, after the Ramadan, to sumptuously give thanks and praises to Allah/God.