Rawlings is Already in Somalia, stupid!

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

Half of the time, one cannot be certain whether Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia knows or even understands exactly what he is talking about. In his latest rant, the General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is reported to be calling on Nana Akufo-Addo, the 2012 Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to relocate to “Somalia, Iraq or possibly Afghanistan,” for forthrightly advocating commensurate self-defense on the part of members, supporters and sympathizers of the NPP against perennial NDC assault and intimidation, particularly during electoral seasons (See “NDC: Nana Addo Should Relocate to Somalia or Iraq[,] Since He Believes in Suicide Missions” (Peacefmonline.com 2/10/11).

Maybe somebody ought to inform Mr. Asiedu-Nketia (a.k.a. General Mosquito), in case he missed the same, that recently when the African Union (AU) needed an envoy to represent the organization’s interests in war-torn and pirate-infested Somalia, it was on Mr. Jerry John Rawlings, founding-patriarch of the so-called National Democratic Congress that such choice fell, not the peace-loving, world-renowned champion of human and civil rights, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Needless to say, in Rawlings, the key operatives of the African Union found a violence-prone Ghanaian and former strongman who spoke the terror-charged language of the Somali warlords. Maybe what Mr. Asiedu-Nketia actually implied was the imperative need for the executive members of the NDC to fervidly prepare to join their patriarch in Mogadishu.

Of course, more than is adequate has been written about Nana Akufo-Addo’s all-too-opportune self-defense mantra of “All-Die-Be-Die” for anybody to further belabor the point. In sum, what the likes of Mr. Asiedu-Nketia are morbidly afraid of is the fact that Nana Akufo-Addo, in vigorously rallying members and supporters of the NPP for self-defense against unrelenting NDC mayhem and thuggery, has called the bluff of a cowardly pack of hoodlums who have no other recourse, or alternative, but to mournfully growl with shame and tuck their mangy tails between their legs.

Indeed, it is to the latter dismal NDC state of affairs to which Mr. Asiedu-Nketia appears to be nervously reacting, when he “urges” the NPP Presidential Candidate to both “withdraw these unfortunate statements” as well as “apologize unconditionally to all Ghanaians.”

And on the preceding score, General Mosquito would do himself a lot of good by specifying precisely which constituency of Ghanaians he would have Nana Akufo-Addo tailor such unqualified apology and retraction. For example, is the NDC Chief Scribe asking the NPP flagbearer to apologize for the three Akan Supreme Court judges whose brutal Mafia-style execution was planned and orchestrated by Messrs. Rawlings, Tsikata and Amedeka? Or the nine senior military officers summarily executed by Mr. Rawlings and his AFRC – P/NDC thugs in the name of “revolution”? Or the hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians subjected to torture and expropriation by the Rawlings posse?

Or is Nana Akufo-Addo to “unconditionally apologize” for teaching NPP members and supporters never again to tolerate deliberate and officially sanctioned police inaction in the face of NDC thuggery? Come on, do come again, General Mosquito!

*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 author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

###