By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Rather than enviously protesting the likelihood of Nana Akufo-Addo's being retained for the third time as flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), for Election 2016, the obstreperously ambitious Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku may do himself much better by marketing himself as a more viable alternative to the twice-defeated former Attorney-General and Justice Minister in the Kufuor administration, than simply badmouthing his obvious moral and political superior (See "We Have No Option Than To Change Akufo-Addo in 2016 - Apraku" Ghanaweb.com 12/12/13).
What is significant to note here is that Dr. Apraku is also a twice-defeated candidate for flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), a significantly lower political notch than being the presidential candidate or the presidential nominee of the NPP. What this further means is that in terms of traction or marketability, the Offinso native is a far less attractive presidential candidate material than the man whose inalienable democratic right to stand for NPP presidential nomination, or any elective office or position, for that matter, is being desperately contested by Dr. Apraku.
Such dirty political tactic, as being shamelessly promoted by the 2008 Akufo-Addo campaign manager, smacks more of the Nkrumaist tack than the liberalist Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition of which Dr. Apraku rather vacuously claims to belong. In other words, the widely discredited former Akufo-Addo aide may well be a camouflaged Convention People's Party (CPP) ideologue and an NPP detractor suavely posing as a passionate and forward-looking Danquah-Busia-Dombo partisan.
The question of whose yardstick is being used to affirm the political marketability of Ghana's former Foreign Minister ought not to arise in the present context at all. The most effective and debatable question is for Dr. Apraku to boldly and courageously put forth his candidacy for the 2016 NPP presidential primary, like the man that he needs to be, and stop behaving like the ill-mannered waif son of an absentee father and a churlish schoolboy.
He may also want to candidly let on to his own partisans and sympathizers the precise reason(s) why President Kufuor deemed it fitting to permanently excise, or summarily dismiss, Dr. Apraku from his cabinet appointment as Ghana's Trade and Industry Minister. Indeed, if anybody needs to conduct a sober self-assessment of his political fortunes, that person, of course, is none other than Dr. Apraku himself!
It is also rather infantile and disingenuous for the increasingly rabid and desperate Akufo-Addo detractor to claim that Mr. John Dramani Mahama was a political novice going into Election 2012. The fact of the matter is that not only was Mr. Mahama a "Transitional Incumbent," he had also been Ghana's substantive Vice-President for three-and-half years, having also vigorously campaigned with his former mentor and boss, the late President John Evans Atta-Mills.
As for his rather hypocritical and cynical statement that"Anywhere [in the world], except [for] places where people don't want to see progress, when you lose elections two times, you go back and assess yourself, and change is not always bad," the least said about the same, the better. Maybe the simplest riposte to this petty campaign-fund thief is the following question: Who is preventing Dr. Apraku from running against his self-proclaimed internal nemesis?
On the other hand, if his clearly depraved intention is to consistently and persistently malign and impugn the political credibility of Nana Akufo-Addo, then, of course, he leaves us with no other alternative but to take him on word-for-word and boot-for-boot. It is also rather childish and sad for a man who staunchly backed the party's Election 2012 Presidential Petition - at least outwardly - to be so rapturously glorifying the Stygian mess of abject corruption and gross incompetence that is the Afari-Gyan chaperoned Electoral Commission.
And by the way, has any dole/dough changed hands between this clinically desperate political scam-artist and the GYEEDA and SADA boys? Concerned observers want, and deserve, to know.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Dec. 12, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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