By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 20, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
Dr. Ransford Gyampo would do better to explain to both the nation and the world at large, why the University of Ghana’s political science lecturer believes that the man with a cloud of brutal contract assassination hanging over his head has a right to head the administrative affairs of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “NPP Must Prevent Afoko from Going to Court – Dr. Gyampo” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/19/15). Indeed, the Legon political scientist grossly insults the intelligence of the entire New Patriotic Party leadership to so facilely suppose that they did not know what they were doing, when both the members of the party’s Disciplinary Committee (DC) and its National Executive Committee (NEC) moved to indefinitely suspend Chairman Paul Awintame Afoko.
Dr. Gyampo may also do himself and the people whose views he clearly appears to represent great good by revisiting the litany of violations and grievances that culminated in the decision by the NPP-NEC to suspend Mr. Afoko, and upon which the recommendations of the party’s Disciplinary Committee were based. His untenured lectureship at the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, does not make the apparent Afoko shill any more intelligent than the equally highly intelligent and professionally astute and successful men and women who took the all-too-progressive decision to indefinitely suspend Mr. Afoko, whose younger brother, Mr. Gregory Afoko, is presently in police and judicial custody awaiting trial as the prime suspect in the brutal acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama who, until his Mafia-style assassination this past May, was the Upper-East’s Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party.
We must also quickly and significantly point out that in the wake of the brutal murder of Mr. Mahama, his widely known arch-nemesis, Mr. Paul Afoko, publicly attempted to concoct an abortive alibi for the slain man’s prime suspect. In any civilized country, such as the United States, France, Canada, Japan, Britain and Australia, among a remarkable number of others, Mr. Afoko would have been promptly forced to resign his chairmanship and possibly face vigorous criminal prosecution for his part in the murder of Mr. Mahama. Dr. Gyampo may also do well to explain to both the nation and the world at large, precisely why he thinks it was constitutional for Chairman Afoko to have aided and abetted his brother in Mr. Gregory Afoko’s brutal murder of Mr. Adams Mahama. And, also, just what “constitutional breaches” is he talking about, when the fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) damns the NPP’s National Council, the second-highest authoritative or decision-making body of the New Patriotic Party for unanimously endorsing the decision by the NPP-NEC to indefinitely suspend Chairman Afoko?
At any rate, what annoys yours truly more than anything else is Dr. Gyampo’s rather curious suggestion that, somehow, Mr. Afoko stands to be the major determinant between an Election 2016 victory and crushing defeat for Ghana’s largest and most democratic and progressive party. The stark fact of the matter is that Mr. Afoko is neither the party’s political strategist nor its presidential candidate in the lead-up to Election 2016. Dr. Gyampo may also need to explain to the public, both at home and abroad, precisely what kind of “party unity” was engendered or fostered by the brutal assassinations of Messrs. Adams Mahama and Abubakar by factional forces in the party loyal to Mr. Afoko and the latter’s sponsors and patrons in the New Patriotic Party?
And just what sort of “think-tanker” could Dr. Gyampo be? We are also told that of the 77 party heavyweights who voted to uphold the indefinite suspension of Chairman Afoko on the party’s National Council, 70 did so with absolutely no hesitation or second-thoughts, whatsoever, while 6 out of 7 members abstained, with only a lone NC member holding out against the indefinite suspension of Mr. Afoko. Now, these figures ought to convey something meaningful to Dr. Gyampo and the other like-minded cynical critics.
