Who Is This Kwakye Ofosu Guy?

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

He talks like someone who spent most of his lecture hours in college in beer bars and the red-light district, especially when he so daftly accuses some key operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) of “ranting and pretending as though the GH? 51 million [allegedly extorted from the public till by Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome] will solve all the problems in Ghana”(See “Betty Is Only Incompetent[;] But She Is Not A Criminal – Kwakye Ofosu” MyJoyOnline.com 6/6/12).

I don’t know which part of Ghana this so-called NDC Communications Team Member comes from, though gauging by his insufferable arrogance, I would not be surprised if he happens to have been born in the district where I spent the first five years of my secondary education. I have a maternal uncle whose wife hails from the same district; and I vividly recall that while I was growing up, whenever my uncle had an argument with Auntie Bea, he would snort and sarcastically, albeit half-jokingly, snap: “Bea, your haughtiness reminds me of an Okwawu man with a smattering of university education.”

I mean, I am cocksure that the annual budget of the district council where Mr. Felix Ofosu Kwakye (or Kwakye Ofosu) comes from did not realize a GH? 51 million during the last fiscal year. So what is this arrant nonsense about Woyome’s pelf not being able to solve any major economic problems in the country? To be certain, this petty sophomore reminds me of a cat-thief whom I personally helped to arrest at Akyem-Asiakwa while growing up in the early 1970s. Starkly confronted with the evidence of his thievery, the SOB shamelessly riposted that, after all, the object of his theft was “only a cat,” not even a goat, let alone a cow.

Anyway, I was also amused in no small measure to hear the kindergarten boy presume to impugn the integrity of the E. O. Group of patriotic Ghanaians whose uncanny stroke of genius enabled the country to proudly join the ranks of key petroleum-producing countries. You see, if you are a pseudo-Social Democrat – actually a diehard fascist and impenitent communist – to the bone, it is virtually impossible to fathom just how honorable and noble nation-builders like the E. O. Group members would be contractually compensated with the quite handsome sum of $ 300 million which, by the way, had they not been so enviously and criminally stampeded out of the country by the NDC rat-pack, may well have been reinvested in the salutary and rapid development of the country’s economy.

Then again, who told Mr. Kwakye Ofosu that the well-deserved $ 300 million awarded the E. O. Group, rather than the Woyome pelf, would better solve the problems of the country? Or is the NDC faux-communicator, somehow, implying that the Woyome theft is the NDC’s boot-for-boot riposte to the E. O. Group’s legitimately earned income? Indeed, it is this kind of criminally warped logic that makes it imperative for Ghanaian voters to show the Mills-Mahama thugs the exit doorway come Election 2012.

And just precisely when did criminal administrative incompetence of the magnitude mischievously and willfully exhibited by Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu and Dr. Kwabena Dufuor get legislated and legitimized as slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanor? Interestingly, and ironically, Mr. Kwakye Ofosu makes the strongest case yet against the electoral retention of the Mills-Mahama administration when he, rather insolently and presumptuously, asserts that gross administrative incompetence, such as pathologically exhibited by the NDC kleptocrats, ought to be the national gold standard or aspiration of the Ghanaian voter. Even assuming hypothetically that, indeed, the Kufuor administration unjustifiably abrogated a Woyome contract on ideological and/or partisan grounds, does such gratuitous policy stance in of itself warrant the flagrant and criminal extortion of money belonging to the ordinary Ghanaian taxpayer who took no active part, or even had any knowledge, vis-á-vis the forging of such felonious decision?

In other words, at what point does the sacred and discrete entity of the Ghanaian State get expediently cannibalized and confused with a government of the day whose conduct and policies are absolutely in no way synonymous with the State as the neutral context of the polity? I think the august Ghanaian Supreme Court ought to take up this most crucial question much sooner than later.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected]. ###