NAPO arrogance defence, fine lawyer turned certified translator

The nomination of the NPP running mate, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, for the 2024 elections was greeted with several reactions among the voter population.

His personality is of great concern to many Ghanaians. Majority of Ghanaians agree that he is arrogant and this attribute cannot be associated with the high office of a Vice President.

Notably, a former General Secretary of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG) tagged Napo as arrogant. He proceeded to explain how Napo threatened and insulted them at meetings. More disturbing was how he insulted Mrs. Eva Haizel, then Director of Tertiary Education at the Ministry of Education to weep profusely.

This is a woman the General Secretary believes could be a mother to almost all the TTAG executives present.

Some of his fanatics have come out to assuage the fears of Ghanaians. One of whom is Kofi Bentil of IMANI Africa who on Joynews' Newsfile programme suggested that "you have what is being said everywhere that Napo is arrogant. I think that is not so much a negative."

He proceeded to say that, "In Ghana, arrogant is a term of art. It does not mean what it means in the dictionary. In Ghana, arrogance means too known, it means you are articulate, it also means you are analytical, it even means you are well organized."

Kofi Bentil seems to suggest that Ghanaians think negatively and that by describing Napo as arrogant actually meant that he is humble. What an insult!

It appears Kofi Bentil, just like his boss who cowardly abandoned his profession as an economist to become a fake digitalization specialist, has abandoned his profession as a lawyer to become a certified translator. This is not the first time he tried to convince Ghanaians to accept different meanings for words or terms other than their original meanings to suit his biases.

First, he declared the current intermittent power challenges we faced as not dumsor. He chastised all those who described it as dumsor and proceeded to give his own biased meaning.

He said on a Facebook post, "My answer to all those asking …This is NOT Dumsor!! The power issues are bad, but it reminds me of what we went through for years!! no logic can equate them or make me want to give the nation back to the ones who did worse!!"

These two examples amplifiers the fact that one cannot decouple Kofi Bentil from NPP. We have learned from the leader of the Movement for Change, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen that the NPP has just about half a million registered voters. Kofi Bentil is advised to get registered to raise the numbers if he has not already registered because his declarations are so vivid for anybody to know where he belongs or tilts towards.

But the arrogant tag on Napo cannot be washed clean by Bentil and his likes in the NPP. The strong desire to change the meaning of words to convince Ghanaians to accept that Napo is of good behaviour will be rejected. There are several examples that demonstrate Napo's arrogance and I will proceed to mention just two.

First, it is arrogant and not well organized when you say students should defecate on rubber bags. "So when you see students portraying that somebody says I do it in a rubber bag and I walk 45 minutes at least you have the rubber bag." The certified translator should know that this is arrogance and not articulate.

Another incident that worries many Ghanaians was the high school placements in 2019 which made many parents and their wards troop to Independence Square to access placements. I think the certified translator might have advised Napo to insult John Mahama for the chaos at the square. "Some of the people who were at the Independence Square, about 50% were bussed by JDM. The agenda is to use it and see if they can let people forget about the issue in Kumasi," Napo said.

More arrogant was when he stated that, "some evil people have decided to pay GH¢20 and GH¢50 to people to go there and stage fainting and collapse, yesterday some of the collapses were fake. I’m even wondering why they brought little kids to the center. This was after some students collapsed after standing in the scorching sun for days.

I will go on to add this. Napo called Ghanaians evil when they asked him to give them a dumsor timetable to be able to plan their lives. He said, “let those who want the timetable bring it. I don’t know of any timetable because the ECG has said it is not necessary. Why would someone just wish evil for the country?”

The intellect of Kofi Bentil is now in serious doubt. You cannot assume oneness for a monkey and a gorilla how much more a monkey and a cobra. Arrogance cannot be interpreted to mean analytical, articulate, or well-organized. Arrogance is arrogance and it simply means pride, rude, insolence, pomposity, audacity, proud and so on and so forth. We cannot for the sake of Napo accept the antonym of arrogance to mean its synonym from the certified translator.

Kofi Bentil's hatred for President Mahama did not start today, Remember he was part of the determined OccupyGhana group to oust President Mahama from office for bad governance. After Mahama left office in 2017, some of the members of the protest group went on to accept appointments in government and many Ghanaians questioned because they felt deceived and betrayed.

He was reported to have answered that, "the previous government had eight years and ended up in a big mess, and over the eight years we advocated when we realized that we were not heeded to, we took to the street. For now, we are not having the argument we used to have. The current government is far better than the previous."

No one with a healthy brains will declare that the current government is better than the one we experienced under Mahama. Mahama's performance in all spheres clarifies that he has done better than the current government and there are ample statistics from rightful state institutions and even the World Bank and IMF to prove.

Kofi Bentil, the lawyer now turned certified translator should focus his energy on getting his incompetent, failed, cowardly, and untruthful Bawumia elected. He should not try to dust our eyes with wrong interpretations of words or terms properly attributed to Napo or people he has a soft spot for. The verdict of Ghanaians is that Napo is arrogant and Bentil cannot be seen to know better.