NPP 2024: A comedy of deception and lies staged by Okyere Baafi, New Juaben South MP

Fellow patriot,

I humbly ask for your indulgence to open this short piece with a poem I wrote some 23 years prior to the 2020 election, which I find a fascinating depiction of the current situation in the camp of Vice President, H. E. Dr. Alhaji Bawumia.

CONFUSION IN THE YARD

Peace has eluded us

For confusion to establish

Making pieces of the whole unity

Our bearing disturbingly impaired

The River of Greed

The last foe to our triumph

Overflows its bounds

Flood everywhere in the yard

The horses are running amok

The birds are flying amiss

The ants are stranded

The worms are hopeless

The old man enters the yard

Not knowing what to do

Whispers hopelessly to himself

I’m even confused

There seems to be recurring nightmarish confusion that has been rocking the yard of the Vice President lately. As to what is the cause of it, I don’t really know, even though some people have attributed it to the recent mammoth Aduru Wo So health walk that rocked the capital city of Accra.

Dr. Bawumia himself, in a desperate attempt to appeal to a section of the party’s delegates in Central Region, at a meeting held at the RCC in Cape Coast, on the 9th of May, told them he became a member of the party in the year 2000. This claim of the Vice President set a lot of tongues wagging at the meeting, as people couldn’t believe the Veep could boldly make such a false claim.

Who in the NPP doesn’t know by now that the Vice President was an outsider who was brought in by Ken and his Databank guys in 2008, when Nana Addo’s first choice, H. E. Hajia Alima Mahama, Ghana’s Ambassador to the USA, was rejected by the elders of the party. And, would there have been the need for any five years waiver and a new membership card for him in 2008 to qualify him to become a running mate, if indeed he joined the party in 2000?

I honestly don’t think it is proper to deliberately subject our delegates to deception and lies at this time when they have already suffered neglect and rejection at the hands of those at the top. NPP grassroots members, whose effort, sweat and toil helped the party to recapture power in 2016 and 2020, deserve something better from those who seek to lead them. They deserve real respect care and hope for the future.

The worst form of deception and lies suffered by our delegates recently was the one staged by Hon. Okyere Baafi, MP for New Juaben South when he spoke to some women delegates in Koforidua. His overly laughable false claim, which is captured in a viral video, that Nigeria and Senegal are being ruled by Christians, even though the two countries are Muslim dominated, has shocked many people, including Dr. Bawumia himself.

Has it got to that? I really consider what he did as a mark of disrespect. I don’t think someone can really lie to people he respects like that, Honourable. I don’t want to believe you didn’t know the two presidents you referenced are all Muslims. And, I could see you were really struggling to make sense with that dry argument.

If one has to struggle like this with that kind of palpable falsehood to convince his own party people to vote for Dr. Bawumia, what do you think would happen to us, if we mistakenly present him as our candidate? Why does he want us to present a candidate with a triple whammy – economic, religious, and ethnic disadvantages when we have someone who can give us superior advantage over John Mahama? Why must we struggle to lose an election we can easily win?

Does he expect us to go and lie to Ghanaians that Nigeria and Senegal’s presidents are Christians, so they should vote for Dr. Bawumia? And, how on earth could Baafi have said that the era of Akans leading the NPP is over when he himself is an Akan leading the party in his constituency? Is he going to live by example and give way, for instance, to an Ewe, a Ga, or a Northerner in New Juaben to lead the party in 2024, since only Akans have occupied that seat from 1992 to date?

Well, with all due respect to the honourable member, I believe simple research on the internet, plus sound reasoning, could have saved him from such gargantuan public ridicule and embarrassment. A wise man once said, “The most expensive things anybody can buy or sell are his or her own words”.

Shalom shalom!