Calling Off Ohene Ntow’s Bluff

By Ekua Kwansema

I have made series of inquiries trying to determine if the NPP on coming to power eight years ago set up a school to tutor its leaders to become arrogant. This is no joking matter because some of the leaders of the NPP simply do not care a hoot when people tag them as arrogant. It seems their mojos peak whenever people tag them by that word.

Talk about Nana Ohene Ntow, Kwadwo Mpiani, Peter Mac Manu, Andrew Awuni, Kwabena Agyepong, Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr. Konadu Apraku, Kwamena Bartels, Dr. Wereko-Brobby and the €˜mother of all bigheads’ Stephen Asamoah-Boateng and you would understand where I am coming from. Even this list is just a tip of an ice-berg. There are more but due to lack of space.

For the 8 years that the NPP was in power members of that party thought that if Ghanaians voted them to power then they have to shut their big mouths and be content with whatever €˜goodies’ that the NPP delivered to them. Any genuine questions that Ghanaians posed concerning many issues affecting their lives were met with bluff and sometimes contemptuous answers leaving many people shocked and bewildered.

This terrible attitude greatly contributed towards their electoral defeat; therefore, one would have thought that they might have learnt their lesson. But we are simply mistaken. Even in opposition, the NPP is showing that they are a party fully packed with multitudes of arrogant men and women.

Why would the NPP people not behave the way they do. Sometimes when you come from a certain background and suddenly find yourself swimming in opulence it tends to go into your ˜coconut’ head leading you to behave as if you are abnormal. This is the kind of situation facing Nana Ohene-Ntow, NPP’s General Secretary. This guy who according to his former colleagues at the GBC was just a normal guy has suddenly acquired so much swagger that some of them think he is not the same kind of guy they knew before.

The late Mr. Victor Solormey, a former Deputy Minister of Finance under the NDC government was invited by the NPP government to answer charges on some alleged financial malpractices. Mr. Solormey was out of the country at the time so he could not honour the BNI invitation. However on arrival at the Kotoka International Airport , the late Mr. Solormey was whisked away by the BNI under the watchful eyes of the NPP cohorts and self-appointed lords of the country’s laws. Nobody within the NPP raised even an eyebrow that it was wrong for the BNI to arrest Mr. Solormey at the airport without allowing him to go home first.

That was not the only incident. Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, former GNPC boss, was worshipping in a church in Accra when the NPP sent BNI operatives to arrest him. Again the NPP people including Ohene Ntow saw nothing wrong with what the NPP did back then. They thought it was all okay since it was the NPP that did it.

Fast forward. Now when members of the NPP are being invited by telephone calls to answer questions concerning their stewardships they are saying that they should be given a VIP treatment by way of formal letters of invitation from the BNI. Fellow Ghanaians, you be the judges. When they were arresting NDC people without even telephone calls, the NPP saw it as okay and normal. But now that even their members are not being arrested but just being invited through telephone calls by the BNI, they are demanding formal letters of invitation. Is this fair? Are the NPP people better Ghanaians than the NDC?

It therefore makes me sick if I hear people like Ohene Ntow who is on his way out as the NPP scribe (Mark my words Ohene Ntow would lose his position), to inform former NPP government functionaries not to honour any telephone invitations. A Joy FM report quoted Ohene Ntow as saying "Now if you get the telephone call, the person says I am calling from the BNI you are expected to report tomorrow at 1:00pm, don't go. Period!"

I wish the BNI has something that Ohene Ntow needs to clarify. I would urge the BNI if they do to invite Ohene Ntow by telephone and lets see how he would react or respond. That would give Ghanaians and the whole world a good opportunity to see if Ohene Ntow who claims to belong to a party that believes in the rule of law would flout the laws of the land. When did it become a right for somebody who needs to answer questions on some alleged charges at a police station to demand a formal letter of invitation from the police before going to the police station?

If Ohene Ntow did not condemn the shabby treatment meted out to Tsatsu Tsikata and the late Victor Solormey, then he has no business condemning the telephone invitation by the BNI. What is good for the goose is equally good for the gander. NPP people are not better people than the NDC. They are all Ghanaians. NPP people are not lords of the land for them to be treated as kings. After all we all pay taxes and are equal under the law. Therefore, Ohene Ntow should shut up and behave as somebody who can think and act on his toes and not just a mere stomach party hack raising his voice with the view to trying to save his party position.

It is even laughable that while Ohene Ntow was urging NPP members not to honour BNI’s telephone invitations, Asabee of all people ignored that call and went to the BNI offices with his wife. In fact as at the time of writing this story Asabee has gone to the BNI offices twice. We live to see if any NPP member would listen to Ohene Ntow. If Ohene Ntow has any better thing to do, I would urge him to take sometime off and pray for the spirit of humility to overshadow him. There is this saying that I loved to read from the Weekly Spectator which says €œIt pays to be nice to people on your way up, because it’s this same people you meet on your way down.€

ekwansema@yahoo.com