Yes, Kufuor Has Been Vindicated In Principle!

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

The article appeared in the Ghanaweb.com edition of February 25, 2011. It was sensationally captioned “Kufuor on Corruption: I Have Been Vindicated.” Such captioning gave the erroneous impression that former President John Agyekum-Kufuor was, indeed, claiming to have run a corruption-free administration. This may well have prompted that National Democratic Congress (NDC) media outrider with risible pretensions to objectivity to conclude in a rather vacuous, albeit irritably pontifical, piece sarcastically titled “Kufuor Vindicates Himself – And Why Not?” (Ghanaweb.com 2/28/11).

And here must be promptly recalled that the article titled “Kufuor on Corruption: I Have Been Vindicated” was in response to the acquittal of several cabinet members of the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government that ruled Ghana from 2000 to 2008, on NDC-crafted charges of “causing financial loss to the State.” Among those acquitted was a former Foreign Affairs minister whom the Atta-Mills government had hoped to nail, perhaps, as a condign payback to convicted NDC political criminals like Messrs. Tsatsu Tsikata, Selormey, Peprah and Dan K. Abodakpi.

That the NDC politicians convicted under the NDC-crafted legal instrument of “causing financial loss to the State” had been predominantly Ewe, may definitely have had a lot to do with the gratuitous conniption of the author of the article titled “Kufuor Vindicates Himself – And Why Not?” Need I add any further to the obvious fact of the writer being a miffed Ewe with an anti-Asante/-Akan agenda?

For instance, when the author/critic observes that “nepotism” characterized official appointments in the Kufuor administration, and that there flagrantly existed “the packing of all official public institutions with people from his particular Asante ethnic group, including family members, friends, and cronies,” the author/critic, to validate his largely subjective contention, brazenly ignores the fact of Mr. Jeremiah “Avaklasu” Rawlings having summarily caused the execution of Akan Supreme Court judges in order to facilitate the packing of the same Court with either Ewe or Ewe-leaning non-Ewe judges who had been thoroughly emasculated by the charged atmosphere of judicial terror.

On the question of the “politicization” of the judiciary, for instance, the author/critic deliberately fails to highlight the fact that summarily executing Justices Koranteng-Addow, Agyepong and Sarkodie was a veritable P/NDC measure aimed at tendentiously politicizing the judiciary in order to serve Ewe nationalist/supremacist interests! It also seems to have conveniently escaped the writer/critic that a preponderance of former NDC cabinet appointees successfully convicted under the legal instrument of “causing financial loss to the State” were Ewe primarily because Mr. Rawlings had also brazenly packed his government with members of his own “Ewe ethnic group”!

But, of course, to “Mr. Ewe Nationalist” it is, somehow, the inalienable right of Ewes, who constitute scarcely 10-percent of Ghana’s population, to occupy 30-40-percent of all key appointments in government!

Even if one objectively and/or scientifically quibbles with the preceding figures, there may well exist another dimension to the proverbial equation that may not come as good news to “Mr. Ewe Nationalist” and his ilk. And it is the quite possible fact that a preponderance of Ewe-descended NDC politicians were convicted by the Kufuor government under the law of “causing financial loss to the State,” because Ewes are stereotypically far more likely than their relatively more entrepreneurial and resourceful Akan compatriots to be afflicted with kleptocracy.

It is also rather silly for any critic to claim that under the Kufuor-led NPP government, there was a remarkable “intensification of tribal politics to corrupt our democracy and heighten ethnic tension[s].” Silly because one ought not to expect an Ewe-led and Ewe-dominated government to make the summary execution of Akan-descended Supreme Court judges and even military leaders its policy capstone as a means of “intensifying the cross-ethnic unification” of Ghana, unless, of course, that godforsaken critic takes Akans for clinical cretins.

Anyway, precisely what does the critic mean by “our democracy”? Maybe somebody like yours truly had better remind “Mr. Ewe Nationalist” that the Ewe founding-patriarch of the so-called National Democratic Congress overthrew the democratically elected government of Dr. Hilla Limann and ran “our country” for a decade as a one-man, one-party dictatorship. And during his last eight years of constitutional governance – out of a whopping nineteen years – Mr. Rawlings would scream and kick against the sacred democratic tenets of our Fourth-Republican Constitution.

You see we, Akans, take absolutely no delight, whatsoever, in being routinely and cavalierly insulted by self-righteous reprobates like Messrs. Ewe Nationalist and Togbui Avaklasu Rawlings I.

Needless to say, anybody has a democratic right to accuse ex-President Kufuor of having “packed the judiciary with NPP sympathizers and politicizing other state institutions, thereby weakening them,” until the grim alternative of having an Ewe ethnic chauvinist like Justice Kpegah heading the Ghanaian judiciary presents itself. Anyway, has “Mr. Ewe Nationalist” read the epistolary parting shot that Justice Kpegah unleashed at the then newly-elected Atta-Mills government?

One can also blow hot air about “Kufuor’s stealing of 41 million Cedis from the national coffers to rehabilitate his private residence and the expenditures of billions of Cedis to renovate the Osu Castle without any tender,” by deviously and conveniently forgetting to tell one’s readers that Mr. Rawlings has yet to explain to Ghanaians exactly how he and his conjugal-partner-in-crime, Nana Konadu Agyeman, managed to school their children in some of the most expensive academies of higher learning abroad, while summarily ordering the complete closure of all our major universities for long and intellectually stagnating spells of time.

And if “Mr. Ewe Nationalist” still wants to talk about “corruption,” by all means, let him tell his readers what official salaries the Rawlings earned between 1982 and 1992. And if he wants to talk about “sexcapades,” by all means, let “Comrade Ewe Nationalist” tell us from whom Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata “borrowed” his current Akan-trophy wife.

You see, it is only Asantes/Akans like ex-President Kufuor who “steal” from “the national coffers”; Anlo-Ewes like Mr. Rawlings only “take” from “the national [Ewe] coffers.” And then if you still want to talk about no-bid contracts, well, let’s talk about STX and the $ 10 billion question. Let us also talk about the secret renovation of Nana Konadu Agyeman’s mother’s private house by the Mills-Mahama government. Let’s also talk about the Rawlingses acquisition of the Nsawam-Adoagyiri cannery, located on my ancestral land, and the chocolate factory at Tema. How about the Tamale NDC “Foot-Soldiers” and the eight auction-scheduled cars stolen from the premises of the Tamale Regional Hospital?

You see, you cannot have a government in power the majority of whose membership is protected by an “Indemnity Clause” inserted into our Fourth-Republican Constitution and lunatically rail about rank corruption among the ranks of our political opponents and “weakened public institutions.” You bloody fool! Who weakened those institutions?!

Now, to the brass-tacks: When former President Kufuor spoke to the issue of having been “vindicated,” he spoke clearly to the question of “due process,” that is, the imperative need for whistle blowers and avowed detractors of politicians – and other highly placed public servants – to provide culpable/forensic evidence if the desired goal is judicial prosecution. On the foregoing score, Mr. Kufuor was right on the proverbial money. The barbaric Anlo-Ewe version (Apologies and exceptions are hereby duly registered) of the preceding is as follows: Tag your political opponent as an Akan, a proscribed entity, and then execute him/her by the firing squad.

*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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