Akufo-Addo should ignore Wereko-Brobby

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

I sincerely don’t think and believe for a split-second that he really means it, when the former Chief Executive Officer of the Volta River Authority (VRA) under former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, says that he is ready to work with President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “Wereko-Brobby Ready to Work with Akufo-Addo” DailyGuideAfrica.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/25/17). Having worked assiduously to grate the nerves of the then-Candidate Akufo-Addo with absolutely no success, it clearly appears that Dr. Wereko-Brobby’s next strategy is to get a rise out of the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-South.

It is, of course, an engagement that he is unlikely to receive, for the simple reason that President Akufo-Addo is too busy with a lot on his hands, as well as his mind, to worry about blowhard unsuccessful gad flies like Tarzan, as Dr. Wereko-Brobby is popularly known. His devious talk of being ready to work with Nana Akufo-Addo reminds me of a similar bait from Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, the former Chief-of-Staff of President Kufuor, who flagrantly and systematically used the National Merit Honors Award to tactically diminish the political significance of the man he publicly loves to hate in the lead-up to Election 2008, thereby practically endorsing Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama who went on to narrowly defeat then-Candidate Akufo-Addo in a contest that ought to have clearly been the latter’s to lose.

But, of course, we all know that Mr. Mpiani was merely the boldest front for much bigger forces among the party’s leadership at the time. In sum, it would be the greatest mistake of his political career, since Dr. Danquah’s ill-fated invitation to the future President Kwame Nkrumah to take up the post of General-Secretary with the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), shortly after the latter organization’s founding in 1947. It would be a great mistake because such a lurid and obvious bait is aimed at distracting Nana Akufo-Addo from focusing on the business of the millions of Ghanaian citizens who offered him the mandate to better their lot within the next four years or find himself, once again, on the sterile margins of opposition political culture.

At any rate, in his Star Chat radio interview, all Dr. Wereko-Brobby did was to obliquely thumb his nose at his personal and political arch-nemesis by taking credit for things whose creation and/or introduction into the country Tarzan had absolutely no part. For instance, the man who was summarily fired from the VRA for profligate spending claims that he was the one who introduced the gas cylinder into the country, in much the same way that President Kufuor is on record as crediting the now-President Akufo-Addo for having introduced the first mobile-phone company, Novotel, into the country.

Unless he has been actively serving in government since at least the mid-1960s, when I was living at Kwabenya, at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC), and schooling at the University of Ghana’s Staff-Village Primary School, Dr. Wereko-Brobby had better promptly retract and apologize for insulting the intelligence of Ghanaians who were either born with or grew up with the gas cylinder, and thus have known and experienced far better times than this uppity country boy could ever fathom.

I mean, getting fired for gross professional incompetence in one’s line of training or specialty is not any serious thinker’s idea of professional fulfillment. I well appreciate the fact of him having collaborated with Mr. Ato Ahwoi on some rural electrification projects, but definitely not in the Okwawu area where I schooled, or the Akuapem Mountains, so-called, where I also schooled.

But then, working and getting handsomely paid under the tutelage of one of the notorious Ahwoi Brothers only makes Tarzan a dyed-in-the-wool National Democratic Congress’ apparatchik. And he can’t have it both ways. Which, of course, logically gibes with Dr. Wereko-Brobby’s very public confession that he has always been a Cii-Pii-Pii-ite at heart, with the sort of faux-leftist leanings commonly associated with the NDC and the mortal enemy of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition.

And so, really, what is Dr. Wereko-Brobby looking forward to being allowed to do in the House of Messrs. Danquah, Busia and Dombo, besides setting the rafters on fire?