By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 25, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
He has died and been cremated and gone; and so I guess the NDC Abongo Boys have now got their wish from the man they so loved to hate with a vengeance. At any rate, there can be only two legitimate interpretations of the two disparate pictures depicting, respectively, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, President, and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Opposition Leader, condoling with Mrs. Obetsebi-Lamptey. In one picture, the widow of the former New Patriotic Party’s National Chairman seems to be calm and well-composed, in what the French call sang-froid, as she welcomes Mr. Mahama to her late husband’s funeral. The meaning of this picture is very simple – one does not let on one’s inner turmoil to people who never wished one well, to begin with.
I have amply written about sustained dastardly attempts by surrogates of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills and then-Vice-President John D. Mahama to irreparably ruin the otherwise enviable stature and reputation of Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, and do not intend to unnecessarily belabor matters here. About all I can add to what I wrote before, in the recent past, is the fact that not satisfied with their epic failure to thoroughly damage the image and reputation of this political and corporeal giant, even in the immediate wake of his tragic and – some even claim – his untimely passing, Mr. Koku Anyidoho, the Deputy General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, went public with whole cloths of mendacity in avid search for the ruination of not only the recently deceased man but also the good name and reputation of Jake’s father, namely, the venerable and immortalized Mr. Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, a distinguished lawyer and a member of the legendary Big Six, deliberately and systematically assassinated by President Kwame Nkrumah even before the birth of this brazen political scam-artist and moral reprobate who had so heretically presumed to tarnish the image and reputation of the entire Obetsebi-Lamptey Clan.
Well, if in the second photograph she is shown to be disconsolately weeping, or totally beside herself with sorrow and great pain before Nana Akufo-Addo at her late husband’s funeral, this was primarily because Mrs. Obetsebi-Lamptey found it therapeutic and even paradoxically comfortable, as it were, to let it all hang out, as Americans are wont to say. Besides, as one whose father, granduncle and uncle were all members of the legendary Big-Six stalwarts, the Obetsebi-Lampteys have far more in common, both politically and personally, with Nana Akufo-Addo than they could ever have with President Mahama and his “Ajanguda” pack of Nkrumah-leaning operatives of the National Democratic Congress, as well as, of course, the rump-Convention People’s Party apparatchiks.
Obviously, the Mahama Town-Crier, or communications Minister, in polite conversation, has not been feeling very comfortable since the passing of Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey was reported in London in March. At least not publicly. And the reason, of course, is very simple: Dr. Omane-Boamah was one of the two “sharp-toothed” surrogates, profuse apologies to Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, whom Messrs. Mills and Mahama used to attempt to venomously sully the hard-earned reputation and good name of the former NPP National Chairman. The other surrogate, of course, was Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa. And today, true to the form and character of the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, these two would-be character assassins of Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey are relishing their comfortable sinecures in the cabinet and government of President Mahama.
Interestingly, however, both Messrs. Omane-Boamah and Okudzeto-Ablakwa would be best remembered for scandalously defying a Supreme Court order to promptly return Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey’s legitimately acquired real-estate property to the man, even after the all-too-predictable fact of their dastardly attempt to ruin the good name and reputation man had failed. I have said this before and hereby reiterate the same, once more, that in a more enlightened functional democracy, these two men would have been cited for judicial contempt and may well have been serving remarkably long prison terms even as I write. Instead, alas, we find these rascals and pathological reprobates and unconscionable scam-artists rewarded with fat paychecks and all the perks that come with “serving” in executive capacities in any government in Ghana these days. But even as our sagacious ancestors of eons ago perspicuously observed, “Even longevity has its own temporal bounds.”
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