By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 13, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
He says he was not elected to make popular decisions; so I guess using his Supreme Court-granted mandate to invite Muslim-Arab terrorists to case out the country and prepare Ghana for a jihadist “revolution” of the kind that convulsed the people of Mali, but for the timely intervention of France’s President François Holland, is what he means when President John Dramani Mahama talks about “Ghanaian hospitality” and “Christian compassion.”
Well, as was to be expected, Bishop Osei-Bonsu, the President of the Ghana Conference of Catholic Bishops, wasted no time in giving him the best-measured response when the renowned and straight-shooting prelate told Mr. Mahama to learn to “balance compassion with common sense.” I am quite certain that Jesus Christ would also have said the same thing (See “Gitmo Detainees: Balance Compassion with Common Sense – Catholic Bishop Responds to Mahama” MyJoyOnline.com 1/12/16). We shall more fully tackle this aspect of the President’s rather lame-brained argument in due course.
For now, we unreservedly add our voices to those of Bishop Osei-Bonsu and the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) for Mr. Mahama to renegotiate for the immediate return of Messrs. Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby to any of the three or four radical Islamist countries that made them “footsoldiers” of the Al-Qaeda and Taliban networks, and from whose killing fields these two men were picked up and jailed for some 14 years, each, on the United States’ Naval Base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, otherwise called Gitmo.
Even more poignantly must be underscored for the especial benefit of President Mahama that if the Islamic religion, or at least some aspect of it, which incubated and hatched these hardcore terrorists has no room or compassionate accommodation for these veritable and metaphorical “Ebolas,” then it stands to reason that using the guise of Christian compassion and/or charity to give succor to these two Saudi-born human plagues defies common sense, indeed.
Personally, I am not the least bit surprised that it was a government led by the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress (NDC) that undertook to literally sell Ghanaians down the river in exchange for these human death-traps. Indeed, I have always highlighted the fact that the NDC, in its several nominal manifestations, has a history of violent criminality that is unmatched in postcolonial Ghanaian history. And so it was logically to be expected that these vermin would be taken in and euphemistically and shamelessly branded as “footsoldiers” by the key operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress.
It is quite likely that the 2016 Mahama Presidential Reelection Campaign intends to use these two Gitmo and Al-Qaeda and Taliban veterans as its co-managers. We must also not forget the Aflao Bullet-Packed Mercedes Benz Truck. Sheer coincidence? I am not so sure. I would also not be the least bit surprised if Mr. Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah of Brazil infamy, wherever he has been hiding these days, the hard-driving Mahama campaign chief, that is, turns out to have been fervidly waiting to prepare these “low-level” footsoldiers for a Talensi-type fray in the lead-up to the November general election.
But that Mr. Mahama and such virulently abrasive henchmen as Messrs. Abraham Amaliba and Kofi Adams should resort to cavalierly calling Messrs. Bin Atef and Al-Dhuby “footsoldiers,” in much the same way that these NDC leaders call their hard-nosed local operatives, ought to tell Ghanaian voters enough about what the latter bargained for when they decided to proffer their mandate to Messrs. Mahama and Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur.
As I have had occasion to emphasize time and again during the last several years, the proverbial average Ghanaian voter is much too savvy to have so facilely declared his/her electoral mandate for the key operatives of the country’s most violent political organization. For the latter credit, of course, we have the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel that adjudicated the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition to thank.
I also don’t know why President Mahama supposes Ghana to be a far more compassionate Christian nation than the United States, especially when one reckons the generally callous attitude of Ghanaians towards Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals, or LGTB people.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
