Celebrating Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan @ 70

Happy birthday to one of the greatest political icons of our time! A man who is unafraid to speak the TRUTH regardless of what the offended parties may think or say about him. A man who knows that a man should not swallow poison because he's afraid to spit and offend others. Happy birthday to the Unassuming Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan, who is no less a child of providence who wields influence and authority with humility and focus on Ghana.

In addition to his humility, he is compassionate and a community-spirited person. The top-draw politician is respected because he hates the politics of Insults. As a labourer, he believes in fundamentally addressing the transformation of society and the human condition for good. Always smiling, humorous, and kind to a fault, Wofa Yaw has managed through his eleemosynary acts to connect to a wide range of stakeholders and ordinary Ghanaians – adroitly deploying his folksy charm.

He is expressive and expansive in his positions on national issues, especially in the media space, where he's well respected. His wise judgement on national issues is spot on. He's fantastic and not biased. As he speaks, he smiles and sometimes laughs. He is not swayed by primordial considerations that tend to de-emphasise the essential gravitas of his political standpoints. He doesn't burn the rules of politics. That's unvarnished leadership.

It is often said that a powerful vision, like a magnet, draws in ideas, people and other resources. It creates momentum and will to make change happen. It inspires individuals, complementary democratic organisations, and institutions to commit, persist, and give their best.

This mirrors Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan's forte. Leveraging these positives, he has also deployed impeccable professionalism, discipline, and persistence in changing the traditional narrative of the National Democratic politics and in the national space as a respected Statesman weighing all the relevant metrics in picking as the longest-serving National organiser of the NDC at both Regional and National level having served as a regional organiser in the then two regions i.e.

Brong Ahafo and Western Regions (They are now divided into five regions). He also served as Deputy National Organizer before assuming the position of National Organizer. That makes him the longest and one of the most experienced organisers in Ghana's political landscape.

Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan was a leading member of an executive that won the 2008 and 2012 elections. He lost his bid to continue his good work in the 2014 NDC Congress in Kumasi, and interestingly, the party has been in opposition since then. With his age and experience, his party should have taken steps to appoint him and some other founding members to the council of elders, but they have not.

Wofa Yaw certainly ticks all the significant boxes. At a testy period in the nation's political history, the NDC needed a humble and level-headed senior member to criticise and guide its affairs. It certainly got it in the persona Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan. Ghanaians are happy when they hear him speak. Because he sanitises the air waves when he speaks. He's an authority in Local Governance and at the grassroot level. Grace upon Grace at 70 Sir.

Many certainly have not forgotten that Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan is a dedicated realist and reformer who bridged all gulfs, as exemplified by his selfless stewardship to the NDC Party over the years. That is remarkable, and it speaks to God's abundant grace on Wofa to produce magical moments and achieve monumental feats in the politics of the NDC, grooming more young people in the party.

In total, Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan has shown a relentless pursuit for sociopolitical growth and transformation of the human condition. Significantly, he has done so in a measured and calculated manner. In a very diverse, multi-ethnic environment, he's a detribalised Elder, he has thrived on respect for his peers, loyalty, discipline, and uncommon focus. All the same, destiny beckons.

A politician who diligently pursued his goals, becoming one of the most experienced and successful politicians of his generation. A Mobilization Leader, a man with varied experience in labour relations and party labour, management and organisational leadership.

His background experience approximate grassroots and inter-group relations that spanned decades, an experience that includes a former Mobilization Leader, a Farmer, a football Administrator at the National Level, a Politician par excellence that has prepared him for the NDC party leadership role as a former National Organizer.

His imaginative and bold programs for the NDC party have been a reference point for a generation. Life for some is a skyscraper; for others, it is a modest one, two, or three-story building. Yet, for some others, the metaphor for the years in their lives is just a bungalow. In the third world, where life expectancy is a miserable forty-something, people of skyscraper years are the very lucky chosen few.

Among the very lucky ones who managed to count the years beyond 60 to 70, how many of them have the years counting for them? Today, May 13th, Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan, former National Organizer of the NDC, steps on the 70th floor of life. We don't only count the years for him; it is marvellous in our eyes that the years count as well.

He bears a name that is very uncommon in Politics Wofa. Those who know says Ghanaians gave him that Title in Ghana Politics. He shares it with no one yen "Wofa" in appreciation of a 'Everybody Uncle' with an intelligence uncommon in depth and wisdom garnished with disarming wit. ." If you follow Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan's 70-year journey so far, you will agree that the prayer of his dad has been following his every step wherever he goes. Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan is not a saint.

Like every reformer, he has had his own share of fair and largely unfair criticism for pursuing a path he believed best for the advancement of the Democratic Party, which he loves so much. However, those who know him closely will attest to the fact that the man has no bone of conceit in his body.

His close friends come from different tribes, tongues, social classes, and creeds. One thing no one can deny is that Wofa Yaw truly loves his party, the National Democratic Congress. Despite incidents of vilification from different quarters, the man's patriotism has not been shaken.

Wofa Yaw represents an era in recent politics that has to be revisited for politicians to find answers to the current challenges, which are not exactly new.

This writer has only scratched the surface in the foregoing paragraphs about the man Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan and what he stands for. There are those who know him much closer than the observer's view presented here. Those chroniclers (including him) owe it a duty to posterity to tell the true story of a man greatly misunderstood for his selfless actions for the better good of our Political institutions.

Happy 70th birthday Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan. I sincerely pray that your sincere labour for our fatherland, like our heroes and heroines' past, shall never be in vain.