No Need For Pres. Kufuor To Be Defensive

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

Recently, a bitter critic who read my take on the Gizelle Yajzi circus wondered aloud, in the attached forum to my article on Ghanaweb.com, whether my apparent change in rhetorical tack and thematic thrust had anything to do with the clarion call for party unity in the aftermath of Nana Akufo-Addo’s blowout victory in the most recent New Patriotic Party presidential primary. Somebody ought to have apprised the critic about the fact of my not being a registered member of the NPP. Actually, I was fired some nine or ten months before Election 2008.

All the same, I will not name the critic for two reasons: One, I am not in the shameless business of affording unpaid publicity to people I deem not to be especially meaningful vis-à-vis the general and collective development of Ghana, as I perceive the same to be. And two, because I have never felt the need to justify the motive, or the lack thereof, for that matter, behind every article that I write and publish on Ghanaweb.com or any other major Ghanaian-oriented website.

Not quite long ago, for instance, a younger critic rejoining an article that I had published questioning the statesmanship credentials of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, rather stolidly presumed that the sole reason for my perceived prodigious political journalism was to humor some female admirers from the critic’s own village, perhaps, even including his own wife. What seemed to irk the critic was the fact that I did not seem to miss the least opportunity to highlight my blood and/or familial relationship to some prominent Ghanaians, almost as if any of my kinsfolk had either prevented the critic from being related to other Ghanaians of equally distinguished pedigree, or from writing about such putatively privileged background altogether. Here also the tinge of envy is invariably one that flagrantly verges on the downright comical.

First of all, I write primarily because I feel the personal need as a communicative human being to express myself on issues that I find to be of moment and cognitively edifying. Which is also to say that my literary objective is not dictated by the ready availability of a discursive forum. To be certain, I have been writing and publishing for nearly a quarter-century, almost for as long as I have been resident in the United States. I have also written for and edited such newspapers as The Campus, one of the most notable student newspapers in the American North East which is published at the City College of the City University of New York (CCNY of CUNY). And for those readers who may not be aware of the following fact, The Campus newspaper has produced a quite remarkable percentage of the staff of the world-class New York Times, among them the celebrated Rosenthals.

Then I have also had the privilege of both reporting, critiquing books and editing for the landmark New York Amsterdam News, arguably the most influential African-American newspaper in the United States and one of the oldest. And so what is all this nonsense about some high school prefect, or senior student, whose histrionic mannerisms I am supposed to mirror as an almost 50-year-old man?!

Anyway, I wrote and published my Gizelle Yajzi article primarily because I was convinced that the glorified Arab slut had embarrassingly succeeded in making arrant fools of a remarkable percentage of Ghanaian journalists, particularly those recklessly blind partisans of the ruling so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). And, by the way, there absolutely is nothing “democratic” about a rambunctious bunch of hoodlums in “congress” with an impudent whoremonger!

I also wrote my earlier article questioning the apparently perennial tentativeness of ex-President Kufuor vis-à-vis the “snow-jobbers” and scam-artists of the NDC because I strongly felt that Ghanaians had arrived at the historical watershed moment when it was imperative for political giants like Mr. Kufuor to burst out of their deliberately cultivated diplomatic cocoon and call out the maleficent purveyors of socioeconomic, political and cultural regression for what they noxiously are, rather than incautiously, or perhaps even unwisely, leaving such statesmanship obligation to posterity. Finally and exhilaratingly, I think the message did get into the vigilant ears of “The Gentle Giant.” For during the last several weeks, Mr. Kufuor has been forcefully and poignantly lashing out at the NDC peddlers of rank corruption and anomie disingenuously gussied up as an edifying moral revolution.

Also recently, I came across an article titled “Kufuor Dares Critics: Prove I Supported Alan K.” (Peacefmonline.com 4/15/10). Only the last of the brief 8-paragraph article had anything to do with its title. But even so, this “nub” of a paragraph woefully begged the proverbial question of relevance. In it, we have the former president saying, “There is nobody who can say that Kufuor called me and asked me to support Alan. If anybody can claim that I asked him to support Alan, bring him to face me. People are not honest in these matters.”

It may very well be accurate to conclude, knowing what I personally know about my fellow countrymen and women, that, indeed, when it comes down to political expediency, Ghanaians are a genius trickster lot. But then, when one of the most powerful actors in recent Ghanaian political theater dares a potential “internal detractor” to a contest of truth and honesty, you can bet your bottom dollar that only a Kamikaze pilot would be apt to take the bait. The fact of the matter is that when such party stalwarts and Kufuor bona fides as Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman growl “Foul, Kofi ‘Dee’!” you can almost be certain of some raging mischief.

In brief, it is not that “Manhyia Kofi” had absolutely no right to pick a favorite candidate for his former seat, it is just that having publicly given his assurance of neutrality, the least perception of bias effectively undermined the entire undertaking.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 21 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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