What Nerve!

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

It is rather amazing, the extent to which National Democratic Congress (NDC) party hacks would go to make a nuisance of themselves and fools of the key operatives of the Mills-Mahama government. In the latest bout of such lunacy, we have a Mr. Tei Okunor, who heads a communist-sounding Youth Working Committee, aligned with the NDC, calling for the resignation of Nana Akomea, because the communications director of the Akufo-Addo Campaign had aptly challenged the authenticity of an Information Services Department’s document selectively and mischievously used by Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa to put the Mills-Mahama administration on par with the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government vis-à-vis the two main parties’ contribution to the material development of the country (See “NDC Demand [sic] Apology from Nana Addo; Want [sic] Akomea Sacked” MyJoyOnline.com 6/22/11).

First of all, if the NDC’s deputy Information minister sincerely believes that the two-and-half-year-old Mills-Mahama government has registered more palpable achievements than the Kufuor government, just why would Mr. Okuzdeto-Ablakwa reduce himself to vacuously comparing basic infrastructural development achievements between the two major parties? Rather, one would have expected that the loud-talking Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would be touting the nonesuch, or unique, achievements of the NDC. In other words, by taking a copy of the Information Services Department’s brochure detailing infrastructural development initiatives of the Kufuor-led NPP, essentially what Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa was telling his audience is that in terms of Ghana’s material advancement, the NPP is still the party to beat. And this is a rather pathetic comparison for Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa to make, considering that most of the key NDC operatives have been actively engaged in running our beloved nation, almost continuously, for at least two decades!

What is also rather laughably presumptuous is Mr. Okunor’s claim that, somehow, in impugning the credibility of Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa’s document purportedly detailing the achievements of the Kufuor government, Nana Akomea has compounded the supposedly formidable credibility problem that the NPP Presidential Candidate for Election 2012 has in selling himself and his party’s agenda to the Ghanaian electorate. This is a classical case of the proverbial sympathizer out-mourning the bereaved. In other words, isn’t it rather pathetic for the likes of Mr. Okunor to be pretending to be more concerned about the political fortunes of Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP than the latter entities themselves? Then also, whatever happened to President John Evans Atta-Mills’ “Dzi Wo Fie Asem” mantra? Or is it that the leader of the Youth Working Committee has been too tone-deaf all this while to appreciate the same?

Obviously, the sponsors of the U.S.-based Hunger Project that recently awarded its World Food Prize to Ghana’s President John Agyekum-Kufuor and Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio da Silva, never heard of either the National Democratic Congress or President John Evans Atta-Mills and the good deeds that Tarkwa-Atta has been doing to our angry fishermen on their critical demand for pre-mix fuel. Needless to say, the Bourlag Group appears to be smack-dab on the same page with Nana Akufo-Addo, when the New Patriotic Party “Stool-Bearer” carps the Mills-Mahama-led NDC for having effectively turned Ghana into a “poverty-owning” democracy.”

It is, therefore, not clear whether in demanding an apology from Ghana’s former Justice Minister, Mr. Tei Okunor is implying that, somehow, both Nana Akufo-Addo and Nana Akomea are squarely to blame for the abject administrative incompetence of the Mills-Mahama government. If our guess has validity, then, of course, the Youth Working Committee Leader would do himself a lot of good by looking elsewhere.

*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.

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