Kwabena Agyapong : Voltarians Are Not Human Beings

A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Kwabena Agyapong, has said that the people of the Volta region are not human beings. He made the hate speech when he came under fire from National Democratic Congress (NDC) representatives in the Electoral Elections’ (EC) strong room after being caught red-handed for, what the NDC calls, conspiring with some others in the NPP to commit a gargantuan electoral fraud that nearly marred the 2008 elections and thrown the country into civil strife.

The hate-spewing Kwabena Agyapong has been exposed in a documentary of the 2008 elections by one Jarreth Merz, a film producer of Ghanaian parentage. The documentary, ‘An African Elections,’ gives vivid accounts of both public and behind-the-scenes happenings in the 2008 elections including the campaign trails of the NPP and NDC and activities of the EC including strong room processes and above all, the fierce clash that took place between the representatives of the two parties over some results from the Ashanti region that the NDC said were caused to be fraudulently changed by the NPP.

When Mr Kwabena Agyapong, a former NPP flag bearer aspirant who was an NPP rep in the strong room of the EC in the 2008 elections, ‘there are no human beings in the Volta region.’

The former spokesperson for former President Kufuor who was stating NPP’s position on figures from the Volta region said since there were no human beings in Volta region, his party was going to challenge the figures from that part of the country, an indication that to the NPP, the Volta region,conceivably, is full of animals who could not have been capable of producing impressive elections figures for the NDC that has earned the region its ‘NDC World Bank’ accolade.

Interestingly, on Thursday 24th November 2011, Kwabena Agyapong pontificated on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana that the rich culture of Ghana is being destroyed by some junior ministers of the ruling NDC whose public pronouncements lack decorum.

The vigilant NDC reps namely: Hon Rojo Mettle Nunoo, an aide to then NDC Candidate John Evans Atta Mills and now Deputy Minister of Health, Hon. Fifi Kwetey, then Propaganda Secretary of the NDC and now Deputy Minister of Finance, Hon. Kobby Acheampong, now Deputy Minister of the Interior and Dr Tony Aidoo, a leading member of the NDC and now in charge of Policy Monitoring &Evaluation at the Presidency and others stood tall when they combined forces to quash the clever EC strong room machinations by the Nana Akufo-Addo-led NPP in the second round of the 2008 presidential election.

The highly irresponsible comment dropped from the slippery lips of the NPP strongman when he came under fire from National Democratic Congress (NDC) representatives in the EC Strong Room, after he was caught in the act of smuggling falsifying results from some selected constituencies in Ashanti region into the EC’s system in a suspected connivance with some EC officials in the run-off, in order to give NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo an undeserved second round win in the presidential election.

The Catalyst checks revealed that as at the time Mr Kwabena Agyapong and his then ruling party’s cover was blown at the EC strong room by the NDC reps, he and his collaborators had already succeeded in replacing results from three constituencies in Ashanti, which were already captured into the EC’s system but the faxed result sheets kept from the EC Chairman, Dr Afari Djan, with three more such fraudulent changes to be effected to make it a done deal. The paper found out that the idea of holding on to the faxed result sheets was for the NPP to buy time, and by their own internal calculation, know exactly how many votes it needed to fraudulently add to its national figure as at the time, in order to be able to steal the election for Nana Akufo-Addo. This is because by procedure, once the sheets were presented to the EC chairman, he would endorse the results and a declaration made and when that happens, nobody could be able to temper with or change the figures.

It was during the confrontation of him by the NDC reps that Mr Kwabena Agyapong singled out the people of the Volta region for a belligerent attack and brazenly poured venom on them in his hate speech. “We will challenge the figures from the Volta region. There are no human beings there,” he said with a straight face. There was a special premiering of ‘An African Elections’ publicly for the first time on Saturday 30th December 2011, at the International Conference Centre. This saw in attendance the producer of the film, Jarreth Merz who grew up in Ghana, Germany and Switzerland, some government officials, journalists and a cross section of the Ghanaian public who were there at the behest of the Ministry of Information.

A deputy Minister of Information, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, in a brief remark said government sponsored the preview because “looking at the rare reviews this work has received from the Guardian in the UK to the New York Times and the several nominations it has received in the West,” it is prudent to support it since it will also afford Ghanaians the opportunity to “see what Ghana did and how far we came in 2008, the last general elections.”

Mr Kwesi Pratt Jnr, the MC on the occasion chided critics of Mr Merz for making false claims about his Ghanaian identity among others. According to Mr Merz, who answered questions from viewers, he had a 220-hour long footage of the 2008 elections and had to scale it down to a 21/2-hour documentary.

He explained that the fact of some personalities like former President Rawlings featuring in several scenes as against former President Kufuor’s one or two scenes had to do with access. This laid to rest criticisms that the film focussed too much on former President Rawlings.

Mr Merz, who said he has other projects coming up, indicated that the road to the success of his documentary was a very rugged one. He narrated the extreme financial difficulties he encountered in the process, which nearly stalled the project. The documentary which has won an international award already and is nominated for several others will start premiering in February. Over the past years, leading members of the NPP have jumped onto the slightest opportunity to show how much they hate the people of the Volta region because of the region’s love for the NDC. Known as the NDC World Bank, the region since 1992 has voted overwhelmingly for the NDC, much to the chagrin of the NPP. But instead of taking the wise route of courting the region, the NPP resorts to expression of venomous hatred for the people of the region to the extent where they now claim citizens of the region are not human beings.

An NPP activist and Akufo-Addo fanatic, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, a lecturer in the US and governing board member of Danquah Institute , is on record to have recently described the people of the Volta region as “not bona fide human Ghanaian citizens like the rest of us.”

Kwabena Agyapong’s baleful description of Voltarians in his hate speech has not come as a surprise, since it is the stock in trade of the NPP. But to say that the people of the Volta region are not human beings is clearly an act of suicide for the NPP since it obviously has serious political and electoral repercussions for the opposition party in future elections.