By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
If you candidly believe that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is almost exclusively an Akan political party, then you ought to also grant the quite logical premise that Nana Akufo-Addo won most of the votes in the five Akan-dominated regions of the country, instead of the two that are constantly held up as prove of the fact of the NPP's woefully lacking a broad national appeal.
Unless, of course, you also believe that the Akan are so blisteringly self-alienated and pathologically nihilistic as to be guaranteed to almost invariably work against their collective and best interests, in favor of the interests of their political and ideological rivals, opponents and foes.
Indeed, it is for the foregoing reasons that I find the Joyonline.com article captioned "Why the NPP Lost Election 2012" to be nothing short of the patently absurd and immitgably scandalous (12/11/12). The fact of the matter is that the NPP did not lose Election 2012; rather, it was Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan who criminally handed over the reins of governance to the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Now, I don't know how many pieces of silver this modern-day Iscariot received in return for his flagrant act of criminality. Not that I really care any much to know, anyhow; for chances are that his monetary compensation did not nearly justify the punitive comeuppance that may be exacted by the legitimately constituted courts of the land.
For starters: it needs to be loudly and insistently drummed into the evidently stolid ears of those cynics falsely posing as expert political analysts that Dr. Afari-Gyan has yet to submit his much-touted list of the alleged 241,000 Ghanaians resident abroad who voted in Election 2012. At the time of this writing (2/22/13), the disgraced Chairman of Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC) had reportedly been able to submit the names and particulars of a piddling 705, or so, diasporan voters. And there is every reason to believe that the former Legon political scientist will never be able to submit the names and particulars of the remaining 240,000-plus voters.
The fact of the matter is that the latter are ghost voters; they do not exist and never existed. And this is one major reason for the members, supporters and sympathizers of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party to jubilate with abandon. And this is also a good reason for Dr. Afari-Gyan and his NDC cronies to begin making a beeline for the lavatory or be prepared to make a laughing stock of themselves with their own excrement or feccal matter. Either way, of course, it is a no-win situation.
Now, let's cross out this arrant nonsense about the NPP's having totally failed to effectively "brand" Nana Akufo-Addo, if, indeed, outside the flighty imagination of the Trokosi critics, there is really anything that can be aptly characterized as the Akufo-Addo branding failure. Here also, the fact of the matter is that calling the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party "arrogant, conceited, violent and elitist," and even "a drug addict" only conjures up the sinister image of Mr. Jerry John Rawlings, the half-Scottish godfather of the NDC.
Then, again, who can sincerely deny the fact that, indeed, it was the affected "humility" of the NDC leadership that thievishly witnessed the lifting of 1.5 tons of Ghanaian-owned gold bars into the "laboratory" of an Iranian robber baron? Now, that is classical humility, NDC style, right there for you, isn't it?
And when Nana Akufo-Addo warns that "Akans are not cowards," isn't it sufficiently clear that he is sternly and aptly signalling the Trokosi Mafia abducters and executioners and their Bukom Square and Bole-Bamboi collaborators to stay their murderous hands as far away from the best Akan judicial lights as the distance between the Sun and our Earth or have themselves to blame in perpetuity?
You see, the problem with attempting to debate a Trokosi political analyst, actually a nauseatingly poor excuse for an analyst, is that this abjectly reprobate species of the human animal lacks the glorious human faculty of a conscience. And this is precisely why Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party lost Election 2012. Damn it!
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York Feb. 22, 2013 ###
