Kotoko Players Are No Toadies

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

I read the brief news report about Kotoko soccer players having roundly rebuffed a ceremonial travesty that would have witnessed their being presented with some medals for coming up as runners-up of The President’s Cup tourney and could not stop myself from guffawing with vengeful glee (See “GFA Vice- President Slams Kotoko for President’s Cup Medals Boycott” MyJoyOnline.com 7/3/11). I was amused in no small measure because this rude scenario reminded me of Messrs. Mills and Mahama’s boycott of the Kufuor-hosted National Merit Honors ceremony some three years ago. Back then, as I vividly recall, the entire National Democratic Congress’ leadership stable called on the then-lame-duck President Kufuor to wisely spend the money that went into the minting of the medals of honor and sashes in making life more comfortable for Ghanaians at the bottommost economic rungs.

So maybe, this time around, President Mills and his cohorts would do well to heed their own advice, as well as a lot of electioneering good to themselves, by auctioning off the runners-up medals of The President’s Cup and wisely and profitably investing the proceeds in the teeming population of the destitute, homeless and unemployed.

Anyway, what makes the Kotoko boycott resoundingly justifiable is the fact that it was, reportedly, in vehement protest of Referee Awal Mohammed’s rather unprofessional decision to questionably allow two missed penalties to be retaken by players of the Berekum Chelsea team during a penalty-shootout, thus deviously ensuring that Kotoko would not lift home Tarkwa-Atta’s Cup. Vice-President John Dramani Mahama, the man who was to have presented the cup and medals, also does not appear to have helped matters by, reportedly, remarking that being that his own wife is a native of the Brong-Ahafo Region, he could ill-afford to have had Berekum Chelsea come up the loser, since he would then be likely to be put in the proverbial dog-house. Very likely the foregoing was said in jest and for humorous effect. Unfortunately, the timing appears to have been grossly out-of-kilter, coming on the heels of a flagrantly sub-par performance on the part of Referee Mohammed.

In this regard, of course, I smell something egregiously political about the entire affair. The subtext here, needless to say, was that Referee Mohammed had to willy-nilly play Number 12 for the Chelsea boys, if the “rightful” recipient of the cup were to be awarded the same.

Still, what gives this patently farcical scenario a bathetic edge is Mr. Fred Pappoe’s rather gratuitous insistence that for the mere sake of protocol, the Porcupine Warriors ought to have played dumb by pretending as if the kind of travesty for which the NDC is most notorious never occurred. What chutzpah!

We also hear that rather than sanction the referee who brought the match to such avoidable anti-climax, the Ghana Football Association (GFA) actually intends to explore a curious means by which the entire Kotoko Football Club could be sanctioned, I suppose, for allowing a grossly incompetent umpire to officiate the tourney. Needless to say, this is classical NDC logic and justice.

Then also, why would Mr. Pappoe, the GFA veep, so cavalierly presume to blindly insinuate the name and presence of Vice-President Mahama into a matter that is purely one of common sense, justice and fair play? Or is Mr. Pappoe implying that the Porcupine Warriors ought to have nodded along with such dramatic absurdity and then gripe ineffectually about it later on, simply because the Vice-President’s scheduled presentation of Tarkwa-Atta’s Cup trumped the imperative need for the non-politicization of Ghana’s favorite national pastime? To be frank with the reader, if I were the former Gonja-West parliamentarian, I would have flatly refused to do the presentation until Referee Awal Mohammed had been stripped naked and tautly stretched over a wheel-barrow and generously awarded some two dozen lashes with a horse’s piffle, and then aptly presented Tarkwa-Atta’s Cup to its rightful owners: The Kum-Apem Porcupine Warriors, of course!

*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###