Gizelle Yajzi/Yadzi Is An Arrogant, Glorified Slut!
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
She appears to be a very interesting character whose name and nationality continue to viciously elude even those media hacks hell-bent on using her to impugn the personal integrity of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, as well as his professional credibility as a politician, of course. Her name, depending on which rag, or newspaper, one reads, has been variously given as Gizelle “Yadzi” or “Yajzi.” Sometimes, even the spelling of her first name is given as “Gizele” instead of “Gizelle.” A similar problem appears to dog her nationality; some news reports describe her as “a Syrian-Lebanese woman,” while the rest claim her to be “an Iraqi-American woman.” One fact, however, holds patently clear, and it is as follows: Whatever else this Gizelle/Gizele Yajzi/Yadzi mystery woman is, or is not, her Arab ethnic identity is quite certain.
She is, indeed, quite an interesting character, if also because she does not appear to be even passably intelligent. Thus what ought to pique the imagination of serious Ghanaian journalists, more than anything else, is how it came about that the Kufuor-led erstwhile government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) recruited her as an “Economic Consultant” plenipotentiary, with discretionary powers of doing business on behalf of the Ghana Government vis-à-vis Spain and Kuwait (See “Kufuor Denies Extramarital Affairs” 8/10/10). Unfortunately, most Ghanaian newspapers, as well as the electronic media, characteristically seem to prefer to highlight the juicy but hardly edifying bits of Ms. Yajzi’s claims of an amorous and/or extramarital affair with the former president.
In a recent article published on the website of Peacefmonline.com and captioned “Gizelle Yajzi: Why I Had An Affair With Kufuor” (8/17/10), for example, the notorious Arab, or Arab-American, woman claimed that she had madly fallen in love with Mr. Kufuor, during the course of working for the government that was headed by the latter. Anyway, unless she is an Arab-Muslim woman and thus an implicit subscriber to polygamy, stereotypically speaking, that is, there is absolutely no reason for anybody to believe that Ms. Yajzi, when she decided to fall “madly” in love with Mr. Kufuor, did not know that by getting sexually involved with a married Catholic, Christian man and, perhaps, one who was old enough to be her own father, she reserved the great negative potentiality of wrecking her lover’s marriage. What with the grim and unsavory possibility of causing a scandal of national proportions?
In other words, our convicted contention here is that Ms. Yajzi is a very dangerous woman who needs not be entertained by a progressive and patriotic media. What is even more embarrassing is her seemingly uncanny ability to stultify the entire Ghanaian media community and apparatus with tantalizingly outrageous claims that have never been forensically substantiated. The muck-raking editor/publisher of a newspaper called Insight even had the impudent temerity to describe Ms. Yajzi as “a beautiful woman.” (Being a grandnephew of “Apedwa Yaa Amponsaa” [1900-1970], the eponymous signature tune and personality of Ghana’s Highlife music, would it surprise the reader that I feel sick to my stomach reading such turd or garbage from the pen of the Insight’s editor?)
No wonder this glorified slut never lets any opportunity slip by without insinuating herself into serious national discourse on Ghana’s development and progress! At any rate, the woman who also claims to have brought forth a bonny set of twin boys by former President Kufuor, was recently reported to have successfully baited the National Democratic Congress’ security advisor, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (ret.) into promising the provision of top-level security while she purportedly prepared to travel to Ghana to testify against the former president in the matter of the so-called Hotel Kufuor (See “’Security Capo’ Assures Yajzi… of Gov’t’s Commitment to Provide Massive Security” Peacefmonline 8/17/10).
Predictably, the very cast of gullible and scandalously shallow characters that facilitated the massive bilking of Ghanaians in the infamous “Cotton Case,” quaintly chaperoned by the now-President John Evans Atta-Mills, does not seem to be the least bothered by the patently self-serving motive of this certified Arab slut. Needless to say, the real motive appears to be Ms. Yajzi’s quixotic attempt to forcing Mr. Kufuor into submitting to a DNA test, as she apparently desperately searches for a wealthy scapegoat to assume paternity for her 7-year-old twin boys who, very likely, have begun earnestly pestering their high-flying mother with embarrassing questions about their absentee father.
It is also rather ironic for a government notorious for invidiously causing the summary demolition of hotel buildings belonging to its political opponents to be, all of a sudden, interested in the process by which the African Regent Hotel was, reportedly, acquired by the eldest son of the former president. Ms. Yajzi claims that Chief Kufuor was merely a front in the negotiations which she, allegedly, personally negotiated on behalf of the former president (See “Kufuor Denies Extramarital Affairs” Ghanaweb.com 8/10/10).
About the only apparent wrongdoing by the Kufuor government was its employment of Ms. Yajzi as project advisor attached to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, shortly after this foreign national of dubious credentials had entered the country suavely posing as a big-time investor. Sad to say, but such has been the general trend in postcolonial Ghanaian political culture since 1951, when Mr. Kwame Nkrumah was first voted into power as Leader of Government Business and, shortly thereafter, as Prime Minister. The latter was notorious for surrounding himself with regiments of expatriate European advisors, even while pontifically and paradoxically insisting on the radical Africanization of the Ghana Civil Service.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 21 books, including “Selected Political Writings” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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