Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.
I am often bothered by the sheer sense of irresponsibility on the part of those who try to play with the fire of religious strife for their parochial political ends. It is as though they have no respect for Muslims, and can just ask them to go to war for them on demand! One such disgusting attempt can even be seen from the title of an article published on Ghanaweb, “NDC Crusaders Calling For Genocide On Moslems”, by Justice Sarpong, Feature Article of Wednesday, 9 May 2012. Sadly enough, what we read in the article and witness there is a clear admission by some supporters of the NPP that they no longer have any confidence in their own ability to campaign constructively to move our nation forward. Hence the need to resort to such scatterbrained tactic.
One would have thought that our politicians would demonstrate a real mettle of statesmanship and rise up above petty party differences and put Ghana first in all their endeavours. It appears the disastrous attempt to make free education the hallmark of his 2012 Campaign have made them rather shy to even discuss the solutions they envisage to the hydra-headed problems facing Ghanaians today. Nothing of that sort has been forth-coming, apart from the chanting of war songs and spending a lot of energy in hiding behind tribal and religious passions to do the political job of causing confusion on their behalf!
It is in this sense that I see the article by Justice Sarpong as a thinly-veiled attempt to provoke a religious conflict in the country without any basis other than the say-so of the Ghana Muslim Coalition for Reformation whose intentions and abilities remain unknown to the general public. There is no way one can even compare what he purports to report as an incendiary statement by the NDC candidate, the Alajo Obama. Assuming that those silly utterances were indeed true and they emanated from "the flatulence and spastic rantings by this NDC Alajo Obama", there is no way that could be comparable with the rantings of Ken Agyapong!
Ken Agyapong specifically declared war, called for the lynching of human beings, irrespective of party political affiliation. According to Ken, the people of the Ashanti Region should lynch the NPP National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, a Ga, on site, if he ever sets foot in the Ashanti Region! Ken Agyapong did broadcast this diatribe live on radio, and there are millions of independent witnesses. There is no verifiable source that confirms even the words being attributed to Alajo Obama are true! Trying to equate one million cedi worth of goods, with any goods worth ten cedis is to devalue one million cedis to the level of ten cedis!
Any attempt to reduce the magnitude of this stupidity displayed by Ken Agyapong, will simply not wash. Dubious as the source of the information concerning the so-called Alajo Obama's call for Christians to "rise up", it does not call for a war. Calling upon people to go and lynch others is not the same as calling on anyone to "rise up", because the others are offering scholarships to their children! Perhaps he wants to mean they must "rise up" and equally offer scholarships to Christian children, just as the Muslims do. That would have been my own conclusion, that our two major religions in the country to positively learn from each other for the benefit of our children. This is different from asking Ghanaians to go and lynch left and right!
Justice Sarpong concluded his piece with: “The flatulence and spastic rantings by this NDC Alajo Obama should be condemned by all peace loving Ghanaians to avoid maelstrom in Ghana.” In trying to make an anthill look like a mountain Justice Sarpong deliberately attacks an imaginary "flatulence and spastic rantings" and in the process, releases quite a large quantity of his own! If Justice Sarpong wants a sincere discussion of the threats to peace in Ghana, he must know where to begin. The real threat facing Ghana today is Nana Akufo-Addo who is increasingly becoming unlikely to concede defeat, even if he himself was convinced he had genuinely lost, and plunge the country into a political strife, not Muslims nor Christians.
Whatever you do, try to take religion out of your politics and avoid such desperate attempts to call on others to fight your enemy on your behalf. It is funny because lack of tact is transparent. There is obviously nothing ingenious about this! The last time around, Akufo-Addo refused to concede defeat, he merely "acknowledged" the results declared by the Electoral Commission, whilst insisting that he had been cheated. Today, we know that at the time Akufo-Addo was throwing dust into our eyes with his "one-touch victory" mantra, he was fully apprised of his impending defeat at the polls by his own pollster, Professor Larry Gibson!
In the lead up to the 2008 general elections, it was pathetic to see Okoampa-Ahoofe taking a free-ride on the Akufo-Addo campaign-hype of “one-touch” victory, even though the NPP flag-bearer had been left in no doubt by Professor Larry Gibson concerning his own chances of winning against the then NDC candidate, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills. Thanks to the revelations in Dr. Arthur Kennedy's book, “Chasing the elephant into the bush”, we now know that even as Akufo-Addo was stubbornly refusing to concede defeat to the winning candidate, as expected of any decent politician, Akufo-Addo was already aware he stood no chance of winning the race in the first place!
This is the real threat we face today! A dishonest politician who refuses to concede a simple electoral defeat and is doing everything possible to cause trouble as a result, including disgusting attempts to fan inter-ethnic hatred, religious animosity, xenophobia, and other cheap and sensational means to whip up primitive loyalty to their nefarious agenda of subverting the will of the people! How come that even before the 2008 elections, Akufo-Addo's own private pollsters predicted an Atta-Mills victory, yet Akufo-Addo claimed he had been cheated when he lost? The desperate cheap tactics deployed at the last minute in attempts to stem the tide with “the Rawlings' Hit-list” hoax only worsened matters, as President Mills emerged not only victorious but also to be “his own man”.
On the other hand, Akufo-Addo's popularity, insufficient as it was in 2008, has been on the wane, as a result of reckless statements such as “We Akans are not cowards” and so 2012, All die be die!”, coupled with a series of drug-related scandals and allegations. The most damning of them all being the Wikileaks cable that points to his penchant to smoke marijuana early in the morning! Having clearly lost the political space, the only option they think of is exploring the military means to subvert the will of the people, kill and maim in the name of “All die be die!”
It seems we are sitting on a time bomb, with a serial sore-loser who is most unlikely to accept defeat even in the event that he himself knew to have been beaten in a free and fair contest! The is where the trouble is going to come from! If Akufo-Addo did not even feel embarrassed calling on the NPP Administration to protect NPP members before they take the law into their own hands, what is he not going to say under an NDC Administration? If he knew in advance that he was going to lose the elections, and come election day, he loses the elections, but refuses to concede defeat, what are we to expect of such a person? This is what Justice Sarpong needs to look at, if he sincerely wants peace in Ghana!
Forward Ever! Backwards Never!
Sincerely,
Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.
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