Pay The Young Man, Mr. Mahama!

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

Garden City, New York

Jan. 9, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

His name is George Tetteh Wayoe. His surname, obviously, rang a bell to me - I promptly wondered whether he was a relative of the rambunctious and hip-shooting Mr. Kofi Wayo, in spite of the fact that he spells his last name with an "e" at the end. This is no big deal, though, since I also have relatives who add an "h" to the end of their "Okoampa." I, on the other hand, see no phonetic value in the "h" affixture. Some of us have also chosen to omit the "o" at the beginning of their name, choosing to instead keep it the way that it is traditionally pronounced: "Koampa." That was how my maternal grandmother preferred it. Maybe George Tetteh Wayoe was the nephew of Uncle Wayo, I half-nonchalantly decided.

Whatever the case may be, the younger Mr. Wayoe, described by the media as a "legal practitioner," I suppose that is a pompous way of calling him a "lawyer," clearly seems to have a legitimate case of financial and emotional abuse against the key operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). He claims to have worked on the legal team of President Mahama in the heat of the 2012 Presidential Election Petition's judicial proceedings and spent his own money running errands for the Tsikata-Lithur-Dadzie gang.

He also claims to have done some hefty media propaganda for Little Dramani; all in all, Mr.Wayoe claims to have spent the remarkable amount of GHC 70,000. And he is only asking to be reimbursed for the cost of his efforts, which NDC Deputy General-Secretary Mr. George Lawson publicly acknowledges did happen. In other words, Mr. Wayoe's claim has irrefutable credibility (See "NDC Disowns 'Mahama Lawyer' Tetteh Wayoe" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/9/15).

Mr. Lawson, however, insists that Mr. Wayoe's name does not appear anywhere on the official roll of President Mahama's Legal Team, neither before nor after the Supreme Court's decision on the 2012 Presidential Election Petition, much less in the heat of Little Dramani's greatest political battle to-date. Nevertheless, Mr. Lawson, the NDC Deputy General-Secretary, does inexcusable mischief when he publicly asserts that Mr. Wayoe's claims are patently false and utterly baseless, and that they come as a "shock" to the ruling party.

Rather, Mr. Lawson claims that "the party allowed the young lawyer to speak on its behalf because they saw it as an opportunity for him to develop himself." In other words, what the NDC Deputy General-Secretary is clearly saying is that if anybody or party deserves to be either reimbursed or remunerated, it is definitely not the complainant but rather NDC movers and shakers like Mr. Lawson who generously offered a free platform at the expense of the ruling party for Mr. Wayoe to make something futuristically worthwhile out of himself.

"At best," observed Mr. Lawson, "Tetteh Wayoe could be described as a sympathizer of the party, and not a member of its legal committee." This sorry-assed story is not the least bit surprising to yours truly at all. Indeed, I have often maintained that the National Democratic Congress is a hard-nosed political machine that is almost entirely composed of shameless prigs.

Just the other day, for example, we had this butterball of an overgrown teenager - at least the level of his intellect said this much - called Sam George Nettey savagely snarl about paraplegics being the only Ghanaians who had an extremely difficult time appreciating the positive results of President Mahama's so-called Better-Ghana Agenda, because they lacked the proper limbs to be able to stand up, on two feet, to delightfully - and one also presumes, proudly - witness the same.

This most vicious jab, of course, was directed at Mr. Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, the wheelchair-bound General-Secretary of the rump-Convention People's Party (r-CPP). Mr. Greenstreet had dared to boldly give the lie to the scandalous myth of President Mahama's Better-Ghana Agenda, right in front of the country's biggest Kahuna. Ironically, less than 24 hours later, the President came out to heartily, albeit obliquely, endorse Mr. Nettey's vicious ad-hominem attack against Mr. Greenstreet and ended up sheepishly accusing the latter of being morbidly afflicted with something called "Selective Myopia."

We had earlier on been told that Mr. Nettey was a "presidential staffer" who also doubled as a "communications team operative." Then we woke up the next day only to be, characteristically, told that Mr. Sam George Nettey's widely touted appointment had, after all, not been appended with the signature of President Mahama. You thought you knew these front-pew NDC operatives after all these marathon years. Or didn't you?

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