Haruna Iddrisu cannot even spell “Dankwa,” as in “Addo-Dankwa”

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

It is a blistering mark of illiteracy, when the Parliamentary Minority Leader of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot spell “Dankwa,” as in President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “Akufo-Addo’s SONA ‘Full of Lies’ – Minority” Starrfmonline.com / Modernghana.com 2/22/17). You cannot facilely assume that since the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics, the immortalized distinguished philosopher, scholar, statesman, poet, playwright and foremost thinker of his generation – and granduncle of our current President – spelt his name Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-“Danquah,” therefore the same spelling automatically applies to his grandnephew.

Indeed, as I have already observed in several of my previous columns, this gross exhibition lexical ineptitude ought not to surprise anybody who has closely followed the erratic and bumbling political career of the man who once had his Master’s Degree in Sociology summarily withdrawn from him by the membership of the Academic Council of the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, for plagiarism.

Incidentally and ironically, it is also interesting to observe that it was Dr. Danquah who spearheaded the movement that vigorously fought for the establishment of the country’s oldest and most prestigious tertiary academy. The wonder here, though, is how an obvious intellectual basket-case like Mr. Iddrisu gained admission into any graduate program at the University of Ghana, much less be afforded the clearly undeserved opportunity to pretend to research and produce a thesis on any subject at all. If this is not a classical example of wasteful public spending, I really don’t know what else is.

It is also a wonder that his thesis supervisor and the members of his thesis-defense committee, if he had any, who allowed this clinical idiot – and I make absolutely no apologies here, whatsoever – to get away with such patent act of intellectual dishonesty of the highest order, for at least a couple of years, were allowed to keep their jobs.

I have said this before on several occasions and hereby repeat the same, that unless he is removed from his obviously undeserved parliamentary minority leadership position soon, the National Democratic Congress would continue to wallow on the gray and sterile margins of opposition politics for a very long time to come. As a Labor and Employment Minister, Mr. Iddrisu barely kept his head above the proverbial waters of average performance. And now as a parliamentary minority leader, he continues not to disappoint one bit with his rampant fair share of gaffes.

I mean, if as a leader of your party, you have absolutely no idea that Ghana’s current population is much closer to 27 or 28 million than 24 million, (the official figure given as of 2013 was 25 million), I sincerely don’t know where Mr. Iddrisu comes by the moral and intellectual authority to call President Akufo-Addo a liar whose maiden State of the Nation Address was chock-full of half-truths and outright lies.

I even doubt whether he really knows the exact date of his birth, besides his obtuse trademark of spewing such obscenities and rhetorical crudities as “The mother of twins is not afraid of swallowing a timber-log-sized dick.”

I also don’t know what Mr. Iddrisu was hearing when the President was talking about his intention to have sports fully restored to the public school curriculum, as well as linking up the latter organically from the public school level to the tertiary, national and professional levels; and so maybe somebody ought to translate this part of the SONA in Dogomba to the Tamale-South NDC-MP. What is more, the President could simply not have “itemized” the reckless spending of his predecessor, when former President Mahama (I understand he now lives in Kenya) had not handed him any notes recording a meticulous breakdown of the same.

And if the inflationary rate as of January 2009, when the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party left office, was much lower than that of January 2017, when the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress also left office, who is to blame? President John Dramani Mahama or John Agyekum-Kufuor?

The also, using sophistry and logically incongruent statistics to claim that Ghana’s rate of economic growth of about 3.9-percent, or thereabouts, was higher than that of Nigeria begs the question. The fact of the matter is that Ghanaians do not set our economic standards according to the growth pace of Nigeria’s economy. Get a grip, Mr. Plagiarist, and give us some intellectually sound and refreshing and credible analysis of a kind that rivals the undeniably poignant and impeccable analysis presented by the man old enough to be your father whom you uncouthly and gratuitously label as a liar.

We don’t need any frivolous and handwringing apologies from you. We need precisely the sort of intellectual and logical substance that you woefully lack. Just shut up and stop making an arrant fool of yourself and your fellow political scam-artists!

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs