I Believe Francis Poku, But…

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

Garden City, New York

Nov. 29, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I have been around long enough to be easily stumped, or flabbergasted, by any shenanigans hatched by the Kufuor-Kyerematen faction of the New Patriotic Party aimed at thwarting Nana Akufo-Addo’s third shot at the presidency. Talk that former Kufuor National Security Adviser Mr. Francis Poku recently told Radio Deutsche Welle in an interview that he was rabidly against an Akufo-Addo presidency may not really have taken placed, even as the alleged newsmaker has publicly and personally denied the occurrence of any such an interview (See “Francis Poku Denies ‘Risky Electing Nana’ Claim” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/29/15).

I, however, strongly believe that there exists such organization as the Atwima Mafia, otherwise known as the Kufuor-Kyerematen faction of the New Patriotic Party, aimed at thwarting or checkmating the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia partisans. There are no two ways about this fact. But I am also mature and politically savvy enough to appreciate the fact that from time to time, whole cloths of anti-Akufo-Addo fabrications are manufactured by some members of the Atwima Mafia and deliberately erroneously attributed to some authoritative figures widely known and / or alleged to be associated with this group, in order to afford them some semblance of credibility.

The foregoing appears to be precisely what happened. Now, this is not to imply that Mr. Poku is necessarily in support of an Akufo-Addo/Bawumia presidency. The fact of the matter, however, is that whether Mr. Poku is in support of an Akufo-Addo presidency or not is none of anybody’s frigging business. The bottom-line is that like all Ghanaian citizens, the man is inalienably entitled to his own opinions and privacy. Even if he actually happens to have made these anti-Akufo-Addo fears attributed to him known to a private circle of friends and associates, it is his unimpeachable right to do so. What is not right is for anybody to maliciously repackage such expressed fears or opinions and callously disseminate the same as if they were officially and publicly made.

In sum, the right thing to do at this time is to unreservedly give Mr. Poku the benefit of the doubt and take his vehement denial at face value. I also strongly believe that there are nihilistic elements among the Kufuor-Kyerematen faction of the New Patriotic Party who are being strategically used to destabilize the country’s largest and otherwise most progressive party. There may be an element of quid-pro-quo here. But whether the ultimate bargain would healthily redound to the benefit of this faction of the New Patriotic Party remains to be seen. My cocksure bet is that it will not. But what is rather ironic is to hear some of the key operatives of the Atwima Mafia claim the Akufo-Addo loyalists to be what they cavalierly term as the “extreme elements” in the New Patriotic Party who need to be fiercely fought off in order to rescue the party and reinforce its traditionally recognized culture of “chaotic liberalism.”

By chaotic liberalism, of course, is meant the purportedly inalienable right of the Kufuor-Kyerematen factionalists to foment mischief, mayhem and even carnage so long as they perceive party trends and/or events not to be going their way. And here, of course, we have in mind the recent slaying of Messrs. Adams Mahama who, until his brutal acid-dousing assassination this past May, was the Upper-East’s Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, and Abubakar Saddiq, the Asewase, Kumasi, resident Akufo-Addo loyalist who was stabbed to death about a month ago, in what was reported to have been a scuffle over whether Nana Akufo-Addo still reserved the mandate to lead his party into the 2016 Presidential Election, in the wake of the indefinite suspension of Chairman Paul A. Afoko by the tandem decision of all the three party disciplinary bodies, with the exception of the Delegates’ Congress, an institution mandated to confer only in times of party primaries.

It is rather strange that the report attributed to Mr. Poku, the former National Security Adviser to President Kufuor, who has since vehemently denied the same, should accuse the 2016 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party of being guilty of the “use of intimidation and brutish [sic] force to cow people into submission.” Well, precisely who are these people who are alleged to have been “cowed” into “submission” by the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo faction of the New Patriotic Party? We pose this question because, so far, the two political killings that have occurred in the party have been done by criminal suspects incontrovertibly linked to members of the Kufuor-Kyerematen faction of the New Patriotic Party.

If the preceding reads like a piece on two discrete political parties accidentally thrown into the same ideological camp, dear reader, your fears may not be any remarkably different from mine.