As the caption suggests the wit of an Ashanti will be visited in this writing. He is a former school mate of mine, a brilliant scientist and a product of Prempeh College (Kumasi). He is a very upright Christian, very respectful, very civilized, very humble, very peaceful and a soft spoken person. Any positive attribute of Ashantis that I have not mentioned in characterizing my schoolmate, please add it on he has it. Out of respect for my schoolmate’s privacy I am not revealing his name; I do not have his permission to do so.
The anonymity factor and the fact that both persons are products of Prempeh College, might tempt some readers to think that I am writing about President Kuffuor, but I am not. President Kuffuor studied law and excelled highly in the field by global standards, but my school mate studied science. The setting was the United States but President Kuffuor had all his education outside the US. So I am not writing about President Kuffuor.
“Baakoye a eni yen mu enti na ama ayigbefuor edi yen so”. That was a comment made by my schoolmate to me in Akan. The English translation runs: “The lack of unity among us has allowed the Ewes to rule us”. This was the aftermath of a small misunderstanding between me and my friend. Such occasional disagreements are natural; and it seen even among siblings. An important point here is that my friend’s approach in conveying his message to me was very remarkable. In his typical non-violent, peaceful, humble respectful and Christian-valued demeanor, my school mate spoke to me.
Some shallow mined readers may be tempted to brand my friend’s comment tribalistic but they would be wrong. Considering the public proclamations of Kofi Awonor to turn Ghana into an Ewe hegemony and the widespread disenfranchisement of non-Ewe’s that characterize the AFRC, PNDC and the NDC regimes it is right to call any of these regimes “ayigbefour” (Ewe) regime. Perhaps a better re-statement of my friend’s comment would have been “Ewe injustice and lawlessness against us”.
The incident between me and my friend was a very peaceful and non-eventful one involving two civilized persons. However, I find great wisdom in what my friend said and his comment appears relevant to the politics within the NPP and our support base at large. The greatest threat to the well being of the NPP is fracture at the united front of the party which invariably gets translated into the party’s support base constituencies. These fractures fall into two distinct categories. The two categories are self-inflicted fractures resulting from self-ego and fractures engineered by our opponents. Both are equally destructive but of the two the latter has a smaller chance of succeeding because we are always watching our opponents. The former has always been a bit difficult to contain because our personal egos tell us we are right when we may be wrong and so we keep on propagating this particular type of crack in our united front.
Once the former type of crack gets initiated, sometimes the opponent from outside would step in to take advantage the situation and help propagate the crack by dolling out money to a faction, as a form of material support. The notoriety and lawlessness of the AFRC, PNDC and NDC has manifested itself in the attempts at using monetary bribery to bring disunity among Akans. As has always been their practice, now that the NDC thugs are in power, they are going to doll out a big chunk of the state treasury to disunite people, an agenda for which the Akan has always been the prime target. Therefore, I urge my friends of the NPP not to succumb to the bribery overtures of the NDC.
I wish to cite two examples of the crack engineered by our opponents, the NDC. About a year and half ago, the NDC started false stories that the NPP administration was guaranteeing a world bank loan on behalf of Manhyia Palace (The Seat of the Ashanti Kingdom). The destructive agenda that the NDC intended was to create disunity among the Akans by propagating the falsehood that the Ashanti leadership was getting special treatment from the NPP administration. I read the story in the news myself and I remember either Atta Mills himself or some top NDC members made direct contact with The Okyenhene, Nana Ofori Atta, to him to voice his opposition. That story was detected to be false and so it died almost instantly. As the second example, just in the heat of the recent elections NDC functionaries were spreading the fear that there is only one prominent king in Ghana (The Asantehene) and that if Nana Akkuffo Addo won, it would lead to the emergence of the Okyenhene in the realm of national prominence in kingship and possibly create a rift or some war between the Ashantis and the Akims. This was empty fear and ridiculous. The irony is that we the Akans are so civilized that we co-exist with each other peacefully and the places in Ghana where tribal and chieftaincy unrests abound are within the NDC support bases.
I wish to cite an example of the self inflicted fracture in our united front that is caused by individual ego. Readers who are old enough may remember when an a fracture in our movement, culminated in the creation of two parties, one headed by the late Hon. Victor Owusu and the other headed by Nana Akkuffo Addo. The votes in our support base constituencies were split among these two candidates and in the end none of them got enough votes to win and they both lost to the late President Liman. Had all our votes been united and casted for only one of these candidates, he would have won the presidential elections. Many people correctly attribute the emergence of Rawlings, his lawlessness and his cohort of thugs, to the election of President Liman. You may all recall that Rawlings penetrated the support base of Liman and convinced the Northerners to join him to overthrow Liman’s administration, because it was the desire of Liman that his administration be toppled. Very ridiculous uh? But Rawlings got Northerners to go along with his diabolic plan. So you see the direct relevance of my schoolmate’s wise comment here? That is the lack of unity among us and cracks in our united front pave the way for Ewe rule over us.
Having given enough background to substantiate the claims I am going to make, I wish to discuss the main point in this article. The fracture in our united front is reeling its ugly head again. Factions in our party are rising up to support Hon. Alan Kyeremateng. As reported in the news last week, this faction strongly opposed giving to Hon. Nana Akuffo Addo, a special welcome as the flag bearer of our party. We have to stop this factionalism before it causes us damage and loss of presidential elections as it did in the past for the late Victor Owusu and Nana Akkuffo Addo.
In the last primaries, I was in a very difficult situation as far as backing a candidate was concerned because I found all the candidates so well qualified that I could not select any one of them. I came out with an idea. The idea was to sit down and trust the wisdom of the party’s kingmakers and to throw my support behind whoever would emerge the winner. Nana won and I threw in my support behind Nana. I am very impartial and I go along with what is in the best interest of the party and I think this is an ideal position which all our friends in the NPP should adopt. I should point out that I am not an Ashanti neither am I an Akyem. As an Akan, I consider both the Ashantis and the Akims as my brothers and sisters and I view both of them as great people.
There is one critical point that stands out in all this issue. The fact is that Nana has been tested, the other candidates have not. In the last election Nana won almost fifty per cent (50%) of the votes. All indications point to the fact had we modified our campaign strategy a bit and had the elections been free of NDC rigging and lawlessness, Nana would have won. So, that is what we need to do next time around namely, adopt a stronger campaign strategy and ensure that the election process is fair and free of NDC malfeasance. So, as far as Nana is concerned our cake is cut and all we have to do is eat it. By fielding a person who has not been tested, we are taking chances that we cannot afford to take. Nana has been tested and he has proven himself capable of winning and the best thing for all of us to do is to throw our support behind Nana and march on to victory in unity.
We must all work together to maintain united front for the good of the party and the country at large. The lawlessness of our opponents that would otherwise ensue, knows no bounds and it has no respect for personality. At the moment, President Kuffuor and President Mandela are among the most noble statesmen in sub-Sahara Africa if not the only two that are left. Look around you in Ghana what do you see besides President Kuffuor? You see violent thugs, thieves murderers and wee (marijuana) smokers who want to be considered statesmen. Without any respect for the stature of President Kuffuor, these thugs marched into the residence and office of President Kuffuor to harass the President and the people around him. These thugs have no respect for the law or for societal norms and their lawlessness manifests itself in almost all areas. Consider Ekow Spio Garba relegating to himself the title of “Dr” when he holds no Ph. D. degree; there may be many of them walking around carrying similar false titles.
We must stick together and maintain our united front and march on to victory. We must avoid factional fighting. Recent political history has shown us that none of the groups that erupt from factional fighting would emerge as a winner in the presidential election. The votes in our support base constituency gets divided among the various factions and in the end none of the factions gets enough votes to win the presidential elections. Let us learn from the past experiences of Nana Akkuffo Addo and the late Victor Owusu. The wisdom in my friend’s comment remains valid at all times.
Let us field the candidate who has been tested and has proven himself capable of winning the presidency for us. Let us all throw our support behind such a candidate.
Long live NPP. God bless Ghana.
Onipa Ba
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