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Oh No Akufo-Addo, It's too early for this

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 Source: Selby, Ato Kwamena

When the New Patriotic Party (NPP) declared Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo flagbearer of the party, after he failed to secure fifty-percent-plus-one votes required to win the slot, he told party members that he was a good story-teller and therefore the best placed to tell the NPP story. That was almost three months ago.

When launching his Campaign team, at an event given a very wide media coverage, including a live telecast, he espoused some values he claimed to believe in. A minimum scrutiny of the NPP and its antecedents against these values exposes Nana Akufo-Addo as setting out on a mission to lead them on a journey of rhetoric or deceit.

Nana Addo stated he remained ‘guided by the values of the Danquah/Busia tradition, its history and its promise and the examples of our great leaders who have gone before me, from Joseph Boakye Danquah and Kofi Abrefa Busia to John Agyekum Kufuor.’ He specifically cited the following values:

an unwavering commitment to and promotion of fundamental freedoms and human rights an abiding faith in multi-party democracy a deep attachment to the Rule of Law the maintenance of Law and Order the proactive development of a market economy and individual enterprise and creativity. the economic empowerment of the Ghanaian the recognition of each of us being the other’s keeper the provision of a strong social safety net for the elderly, vulnerable and needy in society a strong advocacy of individual responsibility and self discipline a preparedness to sacrifice for community, country and continent an unyielding belief in the can-do spirit of the Ghanaian and, finally, a leadership constantly guided by faith in God.

Mr. Issah Mobilla was a member of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), who was based in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital. In the run-up to the 2004 elections, he had campaigned for the National Democratic Congress (NDC). One day, he had information that while he was away from home, the police had come looking for him, so, as a law-abiding citizen, he reported himself to the police. That was the last time his family saw him alive. The police handed him over to the military. His corpse showed bruises that were more than enough evidence of torture. A post-mortem examination of the late Mobilla revealed broken bones. For the first time in the history of the Fourth Republic, a civilian was tortured to death in a military guardroom. This is the fourth year of that heinous crime. Nobody has been tried yet for that crime.

Mr. Kojo Hodari-Okae was a Deputy Director of Immigration. Following a failed attempt to get him to side-step his professional code of conduct, Mr. Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, Minister of Tourism, who was then a squatter at the Castle, the seat of government, without any clearly defined job, branded him an NDC man in a memo he sent to the Interior Minister recommending his dismissal.

Dr. Kwame Addo Kufuor, then Defence Minister, and also acting as Interior Minister, issued him with a transfer letter that turned out to be his dismissal warrant.

The High Court in Accra, ruled in 2005 that Government was wrong in treating Hodari-Okae the way it did, recommending compensation to him for the service he had rendered the nation. Government did not appeal against the decision. That was three years ago. Mr. Hodari-Okae has since not been paid a pesewa and he still remains unemployed. The victim is only one of many people who have lost their jobs merely on suspicion by NPP functionaries that they are politically incorrect.

Are these the human rights values Nana Addo continues to be guided by? Is that the kind of rule of law he has a deep attachment to?

The NPP Government’s injustice to Mr. Hodari-Okae is only a replica of what Busia did in the famous case where following the dismissal of Sallah and others, Dr. Busia screamed ‘No Court, No Court,’ and refused to re-engage the workers involved, against a High Court ruling.

Incidentally, the Danquah/Busia tradition has a track record of throwing the rule of law and the freedoms of the individual to the dogs. The tradition’s aversion to a true multiparty democratic rule was demonstrated in both the First Republic, against Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention Peoples Party (CPP) Government.

Whilst Nkrumah was in power, after walloping them in elections, the NPP’s antecedents resorted to terrorist tactics, which would today have made the Al-Qaeda and groups classified as terrorists look like school boys.

They did not resort to suicide bombing. They went to the extent of planting a bomb in bouquet a primary school girl was to present to Nkrumah. That girl, Elizabeth Asantewa, became an amputee. Even after appearing before the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), she remains poor and hungry and was recently captured by Metro TV, begging for alms. In spite of the noise about healing the wounds of victims of Ghana’s past, she was left still struggling in her misery because her testimony before the NRC, rather than deepening the agenda of demonizing Jerry John Rawlings and by extension the National Democratic Congress (NDC), exposed the Danquah/Busia tradition as terrorists.

Eventually, with support from the CIA, the Danquah/Busia people overthrew the Nkrumah Government in the first successful coup in the country, through the National Liberation Council (NLC) in 1966.

The NLC, which had Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia in charge of the Centre for Civic Education and Akufo-Addo’s father, Mr. Edward Akufo-Addo as advisor, eventually banned the CPP and all its members from participating in any elections in the country for ten years. It was a matter of course then when the Progress Party assumed power in the 1969 elections, with Dr. Busia as Prime Minister and Mr. Akufo Addo, Nana Addo’s father as President. in the Second Republic. In the Is that the multi-party democracy Nana Addo and the NPP have faith in?

Not even the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was spared the Danquah/Busia tradition’s aversion for freedom of Association. It was banned by the Progress Party.

Ghanaians have not forgotten that when he was Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, his law firm Akufo-Addo, Prempeh and Associates represented one of the feuding factions, the Abudu, before the Wuaku Commission that investigated the Dagbon disturbances and the assassination of the Overlord, Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II.

Two persons belonging to the Abudu faction, who were found with body parts of the slain Ya-Na, which act in itself was a crime, were charged with murder by the Attorney-General! .

The charge preferred against the suspects was so strange that many began to wonder if it was done through sheer incompetence or conspiracy to free the suspects. As would be expected, they were acquitted and discharged. No matter how one looked at it, it leaves questions for Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP to answer. Is this how he and the NPP intend to continue maintaining law and order in Ghana?

A daughter of one of Nana Akufo-Addo’s mentors, Nana Frema Busia, has recently publicly accused another mentor, President John Kufuor of obstructing justice by confiscating over a hundred pages of evidence in a matter she had sent to CHRAJ. Incidentally, Mr. Kufuor and the NPP have decided to become ‘mumu’ as our Nigerian friends would say. Is that the justice, rule of law and order Nana Addo and the NPP believe in?

If the NPP Government believed in ‘the economic empowerment of the Ghanaian,’ would they have reduced the Ghanaian to the level of economic deprivation such that today, it has become necessary to give some people cash under a programme Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) to feed themselves to survive? What about workers? Even those under their own National Youth Empowerment Programme (NYEP), remain unpaid for months? Why are contractors left unpaid for jobs done, whilst their bankers continue to breathe over their necks and their workers go hungry?

The recent re-nomination and re-appointment of Dr. Richard Anane as Minister for Transportation, by President Kufuor, in spite of various iniquities hanging around his neck does not demonstrate Nana Addo’s mentor’s belief in personal responsibility and self-discipline.

Dr. Anane, as Minister of Health, while representing Ghana at an international anti HIV/AIDS programme, failed to live by the ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful & Condom use) of the anti-HIV/AIDS campaign he was to champion. He impregnated a consultant to the Ministry and a participant in the programme, who he had engaged to work for his country.

The Danquah-Busia tradition should by now be the last political group to be talking about preparedness to sacrifice for community, country and continent.

Declassified United States of America (USA) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files have exposed the founders of the tradition, led by Dr. J. B. Danquah, incidentally an uncle of Nana Akufo-Addo, as being on their payroll and therefore traitors! Does that explain why they had to call themselves a ‘patriotic’ party?

If the Danquah-Busia tradition had an ‘unyielding belief in the can-do spirit of the Ghanaian’ would the NPP Government have doled out $600,000 of the taxpayers money to Norwegians for a business plan for Ghana Telecom? Where were the Ghanaians they believed are capable of performing, when they gave the management of our water sector to Aqua Vitens Resources Limited of South Africa to manage?

And even in these situations, not only did they demonstrate their lack of confidence in the Ghanaian. They went for people who could not perform, leaving the Ghanaian the poorer, after carting off so much of the taxpayers money.

If the NPP believed in ‘a leadership constantly guided by faith in God,’ how come the Government, contrary to recommendations by a committee of experts on education, ban the teaching of religion and moral studies until several appeals were made by religious leaders before reinstating that subject? Actions, they say, speak louder than words.

The expectations of many Ghanaians is that political parties would come clean with them, by neither promising them the moon nor claiming victory where they have achieved none.

It becomes clear to anybody with the least analytical mind that Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP intend to embark on a Kwaku Ananse story-telling, which he has started, by espousing values not supported by his or NPP’s record in government over the last seven years, or promises in their manifestoes of 2000 and 2004.

If at this early hour, before real campaign begins, Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP would look Ghanaians in the face and make these false claims, what won’t they tell us when they launch their campaign?

Email: zebrudaia@yahoo.com

Columnist: Selby, Ato Kwamena