Just Clinch 80-Percent of the Kyebi Vote, Period!

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

Garden City, New York

July 16, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I know the man's heart is in the right place, but I also firmly believe that he needs to be realistic about any expectations that he has about altering both the party's and his own fortunes in the Volta Region, in any significant or dramatic way, come Election 2016. No, I am not implying that he should write-off the proverbial ninth-region of the country; rather, he just needs to go along for the ride with the minimum expenditure of resources and human energy. He will be better off investing more resources in the three northern regions. And if he has not learned any meaningful lessons during his last two skin-of-teeth electioneering campaigns in the Volta Region, then I have this simple lesson for him - Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would be far better off targeting 80-percent of the votes of the Abuakwa-South Constituency than hope to garner more than half-a-million votes across the Volta River. Besides, whatever impressive votes he garners in this traditionally no-go region will likely come from the Akan areas of this strip-mall region. The hostility is too deep and almost ineradicable.

Even the language that Nana Akufo-Addo used while receiving his party's delegation from the Volta Region, including Dr. Archibald Letsa, that region's New Patriotic Party (NPP) First Vice-Chairman and my PERSCO senior in the mid-70s, strikingly and, I must cofessed, hearteningly underscored the grim awareness of the three-time NPP Presidential Candidate to the fact that the tepid extension of mere "friendship and cooperation" will not work to any meaningful effect or purpose (See "Let's Reach Out To Voltarians For Victory In 2016 - Akufo-Addo" Graphic.com.gh 7/16/15). Maybe one of his legion advisors from the region ought to have alerted the former NPP-MP from Abuakwa-South that in the Volta Region, especially the Anlo southern-half of it, the key word is "Nyebro."

Of course, we all wish that the reality on the ground were dramatically different, but the fact of the matter is that in politics you wisely assess the situation, count and cut your losses and then strategize to maximize your strength and reach in consonance with the same. I know people like Dr. Letsa who have lived and worked among the Akan-Ghanaian ethnic majority, including Dr. Letsa's own father, who was for sometime the Medical Director of the Okwawu District, have a genuine love and affection for the likes of our kind. Alas, this handful of enlightened Anlo-Ewes are few and far between. And they are also amidst a largely wolfish population with an inveterate hatred for Akans. Make no mistake, what we are dealing with here is visceral and squarely predicated on largely false ancient history and plain and sheer envy and jealousy; it has absolutely nothing to do with ideological differences. It is only marginally class- and/or economically determined. And it is the latter upon which the Founding-Father of the Modern Ewe Revolution, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, has tactically and strategically exaggerated in order to achieve his ultimate objective of the total destruction of Ghana's economy, that is, if the Anlo-Ewe would not be allowed to thoroughly dominate and De-Akanize the country's indigenous Akan-majority populace.

Recently, for example, several TNCs - Trokosi Nationalist Critics - have resorted to the flagrant falsification of Akan history and culture, with one such writer even scandalously claiming on several media websites that the globally renowned Kente-Cloth, dating from Pre-Asante Akwamu Times, was actually invented by Anlo-Ewes in the 19th century and technologically passed onto non-Akan courtiers who, in turn, passed the same on to indigenous courtiers of the Asantehene. At least one such TNC by the name of Anthony Dotse has staked such an outrageous claim. Not surprisingly, when they are not busy attempting to make thievish claims on the Kente-Cloth, which actually embodies ancient Egyto-Akan script or syllographs/hieroglyphs, they are fixated on the nativity of the single-greatest unifier of the Asante Nation, Okomfopanyin Osagyefo Anokye, whose place of birth, these TNCs having epically been struggling to relocate from Akuapem-Awukugua to some godforsaken hamlet in present-day Benin Repblic called Notsie.

Well, we shall leave this poppycockish debate for those in dire need of individual and collective self-esteem to sort out after their pathetically scandalous manner. Suffice it to glancingly observe here, at least in passing, that the ancient elaborate and complex Akan civilization and culture ought to leave no doubt in anybody's mind that ours is not a culture invented or minted on June 4, 1979.

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