Okudzeto-Ablakwa Is “Often Awfully Stupid,” Truthfully Speaking
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
To be as blunt with Mr. Kofi Wayo, even as the latter was recently with Deputy Information Minister, Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the long-shot presidential candidate of the so-called United Renaissance Party (URP) is definitely stupid for calling on President John Evans Atta-Mills (may he rest in peace) to fire the 30-year-old political nuisance with barely four months to Election 2012 (See “Okudzeto-Ablakwa ‘Is Sometimes Stupid’ Kofi Wayo” Ghanaweb.com 7/18/12). For starters, why did it take Mr. Wayo three-and-half years to conclude that the Deputy Information Minister was professionally inept and intellectually bankrupt, if indeed, the URP leader were not as obstinately stupid as his own target of abuse? And if President Mills has deemed Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa to be professionally competent, what makes Mr. Wayo conclude that the president has any desire and/or interest in ridding his government of, unarguably, the most hyperactively voluble and garrulous Ghanaian to have ever served as Deputy Information Minister?
And to be certain, Mr. Wayo does “American English” great disservice, to speak much less about his outright insult to the intelligence of most Americans, when he asserts that “pure American English” is, somehow, the basest variation of its kind. Needless to say, I teach Standard American English (SAE) and ought to know something about the precise register in which Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa’s perennially insolent and garrulous temperament would have been addressed. And the right word, of course, would have been “ridiculous,” instead of “stupid,” Mr. Wayo’s brand of “pure American English.” You see, inasmuch as Americans, in general, are notorious for being brazenly blunt in their rhetorical temperament – or use of language – they are also, paradoxically, among the most morally conscious and diplomatic users of the English language, for the most part, especially where the use of language classified as “Fighting Words” is concerned.
If, on the other hand, Mr. Wayo’s reference is purely and squarely to the cultural underclass – or ghetto parlance – which appears to be largely the aspect of American culture with which he is most intimately familiar, then, of course, nobody can begrudge him for his essentially ghetto perspective on American culture. For, he definitely looks and acts the part, his presumptuous bluster to the contrary notwithstanding.
It is also quite clear that Mr. Wayo finds Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa’s woeful inability to sink – or denigrate – the quite decent public image of Nana Akufo-Addo, vis-à-vis the raging dramaturgical violence of the judgment-debt circus, so offensive that the plain fact of the Deputy Information Minister’s abject failure to whitewash the irreparably blotched and indelibly tainted image of President John Evans Atta-Mills, or whatever might have been left thereof, disconsolately bothers the URP leader. Which is why Mr. Wayo, against all common sense and logic, insists on the forensically unproven fact of Nana Akufo-Addo having criminally implicated himself in the Great Cape Company affair. Still, it also bears reminding our audience that Mr. Wayo is a bona fide member of the rabidly anti-Akufo-Addo “Trokosi Amen Corner,” who would stop at absolutely nothing to mendaciously incriminate the presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party, including fabricating and planting morally untenable charges against Ghana’s former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.
The preceding notwithstanding, I wholly concur with the URP leader’s characterization of substantive Information Minister Fritz Baffuor, as a “klutz” who ought to know better than casually allowing himself to be flagrantly upstaged by his rambunctious subaltern. And here also, it is equally significant to observe, as already noted, that about the only blunder that Nana Akufo-Addo committed was the latter’s rather curious decision to “authenticate” a letter seeking to make a fiduciary claim on the Government of Ghana a whole decade after the fact! And here also, it is equally important to observe that Akufo-Addo’s role in the Great Cape Company affair was simply to have endorsed a disbursement recommendation to the aforesaid firm already negotiated and settled with the Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In sum, Nana Akufo-Addo’s culpability in the Great Cape Affair is contingent upon the culpability of the fire-spitting and self-righteous Mr. Rawlings in the same. It is as simple as that!
*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 Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Selected Political Writings” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
