By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Ordinarily, I would not be wasting my time commenting on this particular, quite pedestrian, issue, but an ideologically insidious and unpardonably hypocritical article titled “NPP House Still Dividing...? …As Controversial Book Launch Threatens to Rake Old Wounds” appeared in the Accra Daily Mail edition of June 5, 2008. And for those of you who are avid readers of the so-called ADM, my name may not be exactly strange or foreign. For some two years, I extensively wrote, gratis, for the Accra Daily Mail, if yours truly is counting accurately, until Mr. Abdul Rahman Harruna Atta decided, quite predictably, that it had to be only Alhaji Aliu Mahama for Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) or the proverbial highway.
And so, to further his personal and, in hindsight, especial ethnic and regional political agenda, the editor-publisher of the ADM resorted to playing seriously vindictive games with my submissions. The game was quite simple: Since I was a staunch supporter of the Presidential Candidacy of Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and had not hesitated to write and submit articles in strong support of my presidential choice for Election 2008, on the ticket of the ruling NPP, something had to, perforce, be done by way of swiftly getting rid of me and my columns, in order to, of course, further the especial and unique Dagomba political agenda and interest of the editor-publisher of the ADM. The prime method engaged by Alhaji Harruna Atta was that of publishing my articles without giving me even the barest and standard minimum authorial credit of a byline. Instead, the Accra Daily Mail editor-publisher would credit –or rather mis-credit – my articles to total strangers, in nose-thumbing fashion, almost as if to imply that virtually every Ghanaian ADM reader or journalist could write for the paper, except the abominable Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr. Now, by his banner-headline publication of the above-referenced article, it has become eloquently and incontrovertibly clear why the ADM proprietor resorted to such highly suspect and patently unprofessional conduct and treatment against me. In fine, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., is an Akyem by ethnicity and culture, instead of Dagomba. I am also not a Muslim (for as the afore-referenced article clearly states, Nana Akufo-Addo is also guilty of marginalizing Muslims and the good people of all the Zongos scattered across the length and breadth of Ghana). Furthermore, by Alhaji Harruna Atta’s reckoning, Akyems are an inimically controversial people in Ghanaian politics; more so, because one among their fold has dared to write and publish a history of Akyems and been able to actually muster the temerity to launch it in an election year, in a year when the sitting President of the very ruling party on whose ticket an Akyem won, in the exact linguistic connotative sentiments of the ADM publisher, the questionable right to contest in Election 2008 as the Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party.
It does appear, quite predictably, that Mr. Harruna Atta has a big palaver with the fact that Nana Akufo-Addo is reportedly scheduled to attend this “Akyem Book Launch,” at about the same time that Ghana’s substantive President has decided to virtually endorse the perennial Presidential Candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), by publicly announcing the nomination of Prof. John Evans Atta Mills for the highest accolade of the land: The Order of the Star of Ghana. Interestingly, as we also recently learned, the Presidential Candidate of Mr. Kufuor’s own party, the New Patriotic Party, was also slated to be conferred with a relatively and palpably more inferior honor than that which was to be awarded the NDC Candidate for President. We must also observe the fact that ours is a highly idiomatic society and culture, in which actions are said to speak louder than words, which is precisely why a thunderous outcry erupted from among the rank-and-file members of the NPP.
And so, if one may aptly ask: Is this flagrant attempt to inferiorize Ghanaians of Akyem descent, what I have termed THE ATENGA FACTOR in Ghanaian politics, and, in resolute effect, marginalize them politically what Mr. Harruna Atta means by Akyems being a centrifugally controversial people, even as Dagombas are gloriously characterized as a politically unifying people, by dialectical implication? And on the latter score, we must quickly add, for the informational benefit of our readers, at least, that in the wake of widespread NPP protests against President Kufuor’s rather curious attempt to throw a proverbial monkey wrench onto the campaign path of Nana Akufo-Addo, by publicly announcing the former’s intention to offering the highest accolade of the land to Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, the inveterate political enemy of staunch members and ardent sympathizers of the ruling New Patriotic Party, even while a far more inferior accolade was thrown in, afterthought fashion and for good measure, for Nana Akufo-Addo, Mr. Harruna Atta published a nose-thumbing article in his Accra Daily Mail insisting that the presidential award ceremonies would go forward as originally scheduled, massive protests within the ruling NPP itself notwithstanding. And here also must be added the fact that Mr. Harruna Atta wrote and published his nose-thumbing piece while traveling with the President in Japan on a global conference tour. And so why all this nonsense about the sudden emergence of a politically vitiating controversy in the ruling NPP from Mr. Harruna Atta?
Now let’s get to brass tacks. I have said this before, to the knavishly divisive likes of Mr. Bagbin, the P/NDC parliamentary opposition leader, and am forced to repeat it here again: Northern nationalists and Dagomba chauvinists like Mr. Harruna Atta (and, of course, with profound apologies, we also recognize the fact that Northerners are not, in any way, homogeneous, any more than are Southerners) have every right to treat their chieftains with the sort of abject and unpardonable sacrilege shamefully meted the Ya-Na; it is their right. In much the same vein, however, Mr. Harruna Atta and people who think like the Accra Daily Mail proprietor-editor-publisher have absolutely no right, whatsoever, to attempt to determine for Southerners – call us Akyem, Asante, Ga, Agona, Bono, Fante, Ewe, Akuapem – how to relate to and/or treat our chieftains! Thus, this nonsense about Ghanaian chiefs being largely parochial and localized in their influence or significance is just that, arrant nonsense!
Perhaps, Mr. Harruna Atta needs to be told to the face, loud and clear, that irrespective of geopolitical differences, when it comes to the venerable institution of Chieftaincy, or the Monarchy, Akans are inviolably unified in their reverence for the same. Indeed, any Akyem would readily own, to anybody cares to learn, that the Asantehene is as deserving of our respect as the Okyenhene, Okuapehene, Fantehene, Bonohene or Nzemahene.
We are also forced to record, both for the benefit of our present readers and posterity, that it was Nana Akufo-Addo’s “divisive Akyem newspaper,” the Ghanaian Statesman, and not the Dagomba Partisan, on whose staff Mr. Harruna Atta had his most significant professional training as a journalist and publisher. But, you see, dear reader, we, Akyemfoo, are all too familiar with the clinically ingrate likes of Mr. Harruna Atta to take our latest detractor any seriously. After all, didn’t we all witness the former Communications Director to Vice-President Aliu Mahama’s Presidential Campaign with amused contempt, when Mr. Harruna Atta invidiously and sophomorically attempted to vilify and demonize Nana Akufo-Addo for merely being an Akan of Akyem descent?
It also quite amusing that in the same toothless article, Mr. Harruna Atta would move from caustically impugning the integrity of Akyems to summarily characterizing all “Southerners” as, somehow, being immutably opposed to the organic, cultural and geopolitical unification of Ghana at large. Indeed if, as Mr. Harruna Atta arrogantly claims, the campaign staff of Nana Akufo-Addo’s appears to be almost wholly composed of “Southerners,” this is squarely because the NPP Presidential Candidate chose to unify the party by including on his staff almost every one of his former rivals for the NPP presidential candidacy; and believe me, had Alhaji Aliu Mahama not been Ghana’s substantive Vice-President, Nana Akufo-Addo would also have offered his former rival a prime spot on his campaign. In sum, Nana Akufo-Addo wisely chose to prioritize party unity in the selection of his campaign staff; and we expect a well-educated Ghanaian journalist like Mr. Harruna Atta to appreciate this elementary fact.
In the final analysis, it constitutes the very height of hypocrisy for Mr. Harruna Atta to cavalierly presume that he is the only Ghanaian who has the right to endorse his clansman for President, and that the rest of us are constitutionally bereft of any such choice. If so, then the implication here is that, somehow, and at best, Ghanaians of Akan descent “legitimately” risk being tagged as divisive and ethnocentric, should we attempt to exercise the same democratic right as Mr. Harruna Atta in the choice of who ought to be their leader.
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