Is Rawlings "Loco"?

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

Garden City, New York

Dec. 11 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@Optimum.net

I have always known Chairman Jerry John Rawlings to be an indescribably uncultured man; and no doubt, he is a major contributory factor to the present state of cultural and moral decadence in the country. And so I was not the least bit surprised that the Butcher-of-Sogakope would choose the solemn occasion of the funeral of the Okwawumanhene, Daasebre Akuamoah-Boateng, to make the rather obscene claim that forces loyal to the erstwhile Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government attempted to assassinate the man who has engineered more political killings than any other Ghanaian leader in the lead-up to the 2008 general election (See "NPP Wanted to Assassinate Me in 2008 - J. J. Rawlings" Adomfmonline.com 12/11/14).

The founding-father of the sanguinary National Democratic Congress (NDC) is reported to have named Brig.-Gen. Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, his one-time military chief-of-staff, and a Navy commander as among the goons contracted to rub him out. The specific name and/or identity of the alleged would-be-hit-man Navy commander is not given, and so one can almost be certain that Chairman Rawlings was "heavily under the influence when he made the claim/charge attributed to him.

In the case of Brig.-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah (and I have just been informed by a close friend that the latter has publicly denied any such contract or knowledge of the same), it makes quite a good sense that anybody would attempt to contract him to liquidate the former Ghana Airforce flight-lieutenant. After all, was it not Mr. Rawlings who viciously and deliberately orchestrated the assassination of Major (Rtd.) Sam Acquah, the former Managing-Director of GIHOC ( or the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation)? It is well known, of course, that Major Acquah and Brig.-Gen. Nunoo-Mensah were blood relatives. And so can Chairman Rawlings confidently and morally righteously argue that his is a far more significant life than that of the brutally slain Ghana Army major? And we have not even begun talking about the heinous Mafia-style execution of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court judges.

Well, Mr. Rawlings also allegedly claims that at least one army officer had been detained for interrogation vis-a-vis the purported assassination attempt on his life, with the intention of having the alleged suspect investigated and severely punished after the 2008 elections but that, somehow, President John Evans Atta-Mills had decided not to prosecute the case for the sake of "peace and stability" in the country. This assertion reeks of the patently ridiculous and downright absurd, for those of us who studiously followed the political career of President Mills are fully aware of the fact that the Fante-Ekumfi native (the man was actually Bono-Takyiman [Techiman] descendant) was not known to be nearly half as concilliatory as he has been made out to seem by most of his ardent supporters and sympathizers.

Rawlings would therefore have his "Brother from Tamale" investigate the purported attempt on his life. Well, the last time that I checked, President John Dramani Mahama had not changed his Gonja-Guan ethnic identity; neither had Little Dramani abandoned his hometown of Bole-Bamboi. And so it is not quite clear precisely who Mr. Rawlings' "Brother from Tamale" might be, unless, of course, the invidious stereotypical undertones of the phrase were reckoned as such. I also don't know that in the apocalyptic wake of Nayelegate and the nation's skyrocketting socioeconomic and political crisis, President Mahama has either the time or the luxury to make a national priority agenda out of the delusional hallucinations of Chairman Rawlings.

I mean, rather than exuberantly jiving about his bizarre sense of self-importance, Togbui Avaklasu, I, ought to rather thank his stars that the law of Karma curiously appears to have gone into hibernation over his unfathomable life of thoroughgoing criminality.

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*Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., is author of "Dorkordicky Ponkorhythms" (iUniverse.com).