Who The Cap Fits

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

National Democratic Congress (NDC) hacks like Mr. Yaw Boateng-Gyan had absolutely no problem with the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, presuming to preempt political violence by converting his Manhyia palace into Ghana's equivalent of Lancaster House. Yet, somehow, the NDC's national organizer finds it extremely detestable to hear Nana Kobina Nketsia, the Omanhene of Essikado, put Ghanaian politicians where they belong - on leafless trees with the vultures (See "NDC Reacts to Nana Nketsia's 'Vampire' Comment" Radioxyzonline.com /Ghanaweb.com 11/1/13).

When the Essikado paramount chieftain asserts that "Ghanaian politicians are vampires who are milking the state dry [and shamelessly]," he is dead-on accurate. He also aptly touches a raw nerve, as it were; which is why the likes of Mr. Boateng-Gyan would rather have Nana Nketsia stick his head in the sand, like a peacock, and make believe that President Mahama's tenure is the golden age of Ghana's democratic political culture.

What, for instance, does Mr. Boateng-Gyan expect Ghanaians to make of the preposterous fact of their national assmbly representatives being literally "gifted" with humongous "gratuity" payment packages every four years? Now, that translates into my maternal grandfather, the Rev. T. H. Sintim(-Aboagye), of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, having missed out on fifteen (15) gratuity payments for the sixty-odd years that he served his country as a vanguard educator and clergyman.

I also vehemently challenge the NDC's national organizer to name a handful of those politicians whose unsullied and impeccable credentials, Mr. Boateng-Gyan claims, makes Nana Nketsia sound like a pathological ingrate. The fact of the matter is that every Ghanaian parliamentarian, without exception, is guilty of unconscionably milking the country dry; and by the latter observation also follows the unmistakable implication of the Ghanaian politician having made a primary mission out of the wanton and inexorable exploitation of the very citizenry whose interests s/he claims to be serving.

In sum, the frontal challenge that I am hereby throwing to Mr. Boateng Gyan is for the latter to name us a single Ghanaian MP who has gone on record as having flatly rejected his/her orgiastic quadrennial gratuity package(s). We must also herein recall the fact that in the lead-up to Election 2012, Mr. Boateng-Gyan was widely reported to have covertly prepared an army of some of his party's youths for an apocalyptic assault on their main political opponents, in the event of polling activities not going as orchestrated by the Mahama posse.

What is significant here, more than anything else, to observe is the fact that Mr. Boateng-Gyan was widely alleged to have laid out his plan with the active and unreserved connivance and condonation of the members of the highest echelons of the erstwhile Mills-Mahama government. And so what kind of "decent politicians" could the NDC national organizer be talking about?

We must also underscore the glaring fact that when Nana Nketsia asserts that: "I am a Vandal and a Ghanaian [and that these two qualities matter] much more than all these [political shenanigans] going on," he unmistakenly reminds predictably self-righteous critics like Mr. Boateng-Gyan that he is more than well-educated enough to make any judgment calls on national affairs without any fear of contradiction, whatsoever.

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

Nov. 11, 2013

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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