Why Is Stanislav Dogbe blaming NPP for independence brochure gaffe?

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

Garden City, New York

March 14, 2016

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

It constitutes the basest level of desperation for the former Head of Communications at the Flagstaff House to blame New Patriotic Party (NPP) operatives for colluding with some National Democratic Congress’ insiders to implicate Mr. Stanislav Xoese Dogbe in the error-ridden program brochure that greeted Ghana’s 59th Independence Anniversary Commemoration (See “Brochure Saga: Leave Out My Wife – Stan Dogbe” Dailyguideafrica.com /Ghanaweb.com 3/14/16). Is this a tell-tale sign of the beginning of the end of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress?

Whatever the real nature of the problem may be, what is clear is that the executive branch of government or the legislature or all three branches of government may have to come up with some form of protocol guidelines vis-à-vis the relationship that ought to exist between private entrepreneurs who decide to take up government appointments, be they cabinet or non-cabinet portfolios, and the government itself, if serious and damning conflicts of interest are to be avoided. For instance, when President John Dramani Mahama decided to name Mr. Dogbe as Head of Communications at the Presidency, what were the stipulated requirements in terms of whether Mr. Dogbe was going to retain both proprietorship of his EventPR firm, as well as retain direct managerial authority over his mom-and-pop firm?

What, for instance, was going to be the relationship between EventPR and such cabinet appointees as Ms. Hanna Tetteh, Ghana’s Foreign Minister, and Mrs. Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, the Culture Affairs Minister? We are also told that Mr. Francis Kwarteng-Arthur, the recently dismissed Acting Director of the Information Services Department (ISD), is also the Director of EventPR. The preceding state of affairs makes it extremely difficult for any well-meaning Ghanaian citizen to accept the patently dubious premise that absolutely no conflict of interest, whatsoever, existed between the owners and operators of EventPR and the Mahama Presidency.

Even if one accepts the incredible premise that neither Mr. Dogbe nor his PR firm was involved in the production of the schlocky brochure criminally passed off as the program of activities for Ghana’s 59th Independence Anniversary Festivities, the stark fact still remains that the primary or heavy involvement of Mr. Kwarteng-Arthur, the fired acting ISD director, makes the involvement of EventPR logically inescapable. At the very least, it can scarcely be gainsaid that whatever company or contractor got awarded the bid to produce the ill-fated brochures could not have been afforded such privilege without the direct influences of Messrs. Dogbe and Kwarteng-Arthur.

At any rate, as the substantive Communications Director at the Flagstaff House, or the Presidency, it was incumbent upon Mr. Dogbe to have critically and diligently examined the production of the brochure at the most significant moments, that is, from the literary composition of the program through its editing and proofreading to the printing stage. For instance, there ought to have been a trial run of say 50 to 100 copies, which should have met with the express approval of the Presidency before the entire production run of 3,000 was allowed to proceed. I would not be the least bit surprised if President Mahama’s decision to transfer Mr. Dogbe from Head of Communications to the Protocol Division of the Flagstaff House stems from this untenably gross dereliction of salaried responsibility on the party of the latter.

Unlike IMANI-Ghana’s Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was the much-remarked gross incompetence of many a Mahama executive appointee that engendered what has come to be termed, in American-speak, as “Brochuregate.” I mean, here we are saddled with a government about 80-percent of whose deputy cabinet appointees are graduate students.

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