Who Are These Akufo-Addo Men?

It appeared as an “Editorial” on the website of Peacefmonline.com; and it was fully captioned “In The Unlikely Event That Akufo-Addo Becomes President…” (7/27/10). What attracted my attention and also piqued my utter contempt was the rather vacuous basis on which the “editorialist” predicated his hypothetical vitriol. Now, I don’t know who this Kofi Dubai bloke is, except to unreservedly regret the fact that he had allegedly been manhandled by a posse cynically described as “Akufo-Addo’s men.” And if the reader had been paying sedulous attention to Ghana’s “democratic” politics in recent years, s/he would have readily picked up the abject cynicism underlying the thrust of the author’s argument. For starters, this is not the very first time that “the men” of any major Ghanaian politician have been alleged to have manhandled a member of the same political party to which the concerned figure belongs. Neither is it the second nor even the third time that any such allegation has been made. And very likely, this is not the last time that we shall be hearing of the same. And so precisely what does the “editorialist” mean, when he inveighs to the following effect: “If a crocodile devours its own children, what would it not do to a frog?”Well, in terms of modern Ghanaian politics, the metaphorical crocodile, of course, is no other anthropophagic figure, as it were, than former President Jeremiah John Rawlings, especially if serious cognizance were taken of the suggestive aspect dealing with the at once eerie and barbaric element of cannibalism. In other words, if the author of “In the Unlikely Event…” intended by his “editorial” to send Ghanaian voters a morally mordant message about the current presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), then, needless to say, the writer has grossly misfired. Before we proceed any further, however, it may be worth the reader’s while to promptly observe that both the ethnicity and ideological suasion of the author of the anti-Akufo-Addo tirade are well known. The writer, if we may pertinently note, at least in passing, goes by an Akan pseudonym, although he is notorious for being an anti-Akan ethnic chauvinist whose highly positioned, but not necessarily highly regarded, soldier father has been deeply complicit in the ongoing “revolutionary” attempts to systematically and permanently undermine Akan cultural coherence and integrity. Furthermore, belonging to a criminal posse of anti-Akan “Super-Nationalists,” naturally, the writer’s agenda has been to target any major Akan political figure known to be a stickler for justice and fair play in the distribution of the proverbial national cake. Else, why would the writer single out Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, of all Ghanaians, as a poster-boy of NPP judicial vendetta, assuming that, indeed, any such agenda exists as such? What makes the entire hypothetical thrust of the article of the anti-Akan “editorialist” reek of the abjectly nauseating is its metaphorical presumption of Mr. Tsikata as a symbol of violated innocence on the Ghanaian political landscape. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In sum, any attempt to flagrantly sanitize the image of, perhaps, the most vicious capo among the Dzelukope Mafia would be akin to dubbing Adolf Hitler as the “Great Unifier of Modern Europe.” And it was at once rather scandalous and irreparably damning of Ghana’s global image, when recently his Amen Corner among the National Democratic Congress constabulary called for the knighting of the most kleptocratic director of the National Petroleum Corporation (NPC) ever as a pioneer in both the prospecting and discovery of oil in commercial quantities. It is also rather amusing to “hear” the writer “talk” about “the many NPP judges in the system,” almost as if the P/NDC had any rival in the abject stacking and politicization of the Ghanaian judiciary. Of course, this phrase also eerily points to the prime NDC agenda of systematically sweeping off the bench any Ghanaian jurists who are known to harbor the kind of liberal ideological outlook traditionally associated with the NPP. The fact of the matter is that in Ghanaian political parlance, the NDC is decidedly the very essence and epitome of death; for whatever the latter touches falls into abject decay and desuetude. On the other hand, sleep is a therapeutic balm that both refreshes and reinvigorates. Which was why having busied Himself with creative enterprise for six continuous days, Divine Providence had to give Himself some “sleep,” and rest, on the seventh day. Consequently, when the author of “In the Unlikely Event…” rather risibly quotes us Akans to the effect of claiming that “If you don’t know death, look at sleep,” the writer ought to be forgiven for indulging in such criminally simplistic misrepresentation. *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 also a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of a forthcoming volume of poetry titled “The Obama Serenades.” E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.