By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 27, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
Following last Monday’s raiding of the Asylum Down headquarters of Ghana’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), the country’s Communication Minister, Dr. Edward Omane-Boamah, issued a statement to the media vehemently denying the widely alleged government’s involvement (See “NPP Headquarters Now Outpost of Lawlessness – Gov’t” Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 11/27/15). The former medical practitioner at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Ghana’s flagship health center, characteristically intemperately lashed out at his party’s main political opponents by describing the headquarters of the New Patriotic Party as a veritable outpost of “horrendous leadership… chaos, violence, lawlessness, brutal killings and total confusion.”
On the latter score, we have a bounden obligation to let those Ghanaians who were either not born or were too young to remember know that it was the founding fathers, and mothers, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), foremost among them Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, who unconscionably orchestrated the savage and primitive abduction of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court judges and brutally executed them, Mafia-style, on June 30, 1982. Earlier on, in June 1979, under the specious guise of a “revolutionary housecleaning exercise,” the Chairman Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) would summarily execute some 9 former military rulers of the country on largely trumped up charges of corruption. Today, Chairman Rawlings bitterly laments that the fruits of his revolutionary activities, designed and orchestrated in the name of “probity, accountability, transparency and justice” has culminated in the most corrupt regime in postcolonial Ghanaian history.
The unmistakable reference here, of course, is to the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress. Mr. Mahama recently asserted that among the phalanx of the critics of his government, only Messrs. Rawlings and John Agyekum-Kufuor are the most credible and authoritative, because it is only these two living Ghanaian leaders who, like Mr. Mahama, have served in the rarefied capacity of President of Ghana. And so it is hoped that Dr. Omane-Boamah would take the foregoing criticism levelled at his boss in stride. At any rate, our primary concern here regards what actually transpired in the wee hours of November 23, at the headquarters of the New Patriotic Party, exactly 14 years to the day of the passing of the father of yours truly right here in New York City. The old man’s mortal remains, at his own express instructions, are buried at the Kyebi Presbyterian Church Cemetery. An essay-writing contest award has also been established in his name at the Technical Career Institutes (TCI), right here in New York City, where he taught speech, technical writing and college composition. It is called The Kwame Ahoofe Essay Award. I was privileged some 12 years ago to be invited to present the maiden award of $1,000 (One-Thousand Dollars) to a student bound for a 4-year college academic/professional career and beyond, which is the main objective of the award.
Well, we are reliably informed by Mr. Perry Okudzeto, the Deputy NPP Communications Director, that on November 23 when some heavily armed security agents, wearing military fatigues, stormed the party’s Asylum Down national headquarters, they arrested two legitimately hired armed security guards and two caretakers, whom these security agents charged with the illegal possession of assault weapons (See “ ‘Military Men’ Deliberately Incriminated Four Supporters – NPP” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/27/15). I am assuming the two “caretakers” to be what we, New Yorkers, call janitors, or the janitorial staff, of the New Patriotic Party’s national headquarters. But what is more than simply disturbing is Mr. Okudzeto’s further allegation that the men who raided the NPP headquarters carried a sack full of assault weapons which they forced the two armed security guards to handle, very likely with the ultimate objective of conducting DNA analyses on these weapons and then criminally charging these two men with the illegal possession of assault rifles, or whatever might have been the makes or models of the aforesaid weapons.
I hope Mr. Okudzeto took some forensically sustainable photographs of the intruders with his cellphone unless, of course, as is routinely the case, these state-sponsored burglars forbade the Deputy NPP Communications Director from doing so. And if the NPP’s headquarters is not already equipped with surveillance cameras, then perhaps it is about time such security cameras got installed. Rest assured that if, indeed, the eyewitness account of what really occurred at the NPP’s national headquarters, as provided by Mr. Okudzeto, has validity any dastardly attempt by these “security forces” to railroad the two armed guards would be fiercely resisted. And whoever put such a horrendous scam together will dearly pay for it. Mind you, the year is 2015, not 1958.
