Allotey Jacobs
He did absolutely nothing wrong, besides seeing and calling out what most Ghanaians unafflicted by the cancerous disease of partisan politics see and call out on a daily basis, vis-à-vis the great, visionary and phenomenal leadership achievements of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Actually, what I wanted to say, or rather write, in the preceding sentence was, “The great, visionary and progressive achievements of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.” Somehow, Mr. Bernard Allotey Jacobs was pressured to give up his social commentator’s seat on PeaceFM’s breakfast flagship talking-heads show called “Kokrokoo,” because the brutally frank and honest former Central Regional Chairman of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), had aptly commended Nana Akufo-Addo for such sterling nonesuch development achievements as supplying each and every one of the 275 electoral constituencies in the country with a state-of-the-art ambulance (See “Allotey Stuns ‘Kokrokoo’ Listeners, Baako and Kwamena Duncan Choke” PeaceFM.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/14/20).
Mr. Allotey Jacobs had also objectively, albeit passionately, commended Ghana’s former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice for having put his money where his mouth is, by fully and unreservedly implementing his much-touted fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative, to the awe and shock of those payola-guzzling leaders of the National Democratic Congress, who had fervidly hoped that only they and their children and the children of their very close relatives and political allies and cronies would have access to these basic goodies that every functioning democracy and civilized polity ought to be able to afford each and every one of its youthful citizens.
The Mahama Posse and its self-loathing southern-descended cronies and lickspittles inside the National Democratic Congress think and believe that, somehow, it is only the children of northern-descended Ghanaian citizens, in particular Ghanaian citizens of high standing in Ghanaian society, who have an inalienable constitutional right to freely access our taxpayer-underwritten Senior High School System.
It was for the foregoing reason why, rather than help the chiefs and the people of Akyem-Mansa, in particular Akyem-Abuakwa, the then-President John Dramani Mahama chose to thumb his nose at The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, by dubbing Kyebi, the ancient royal Okyeman capital, as the Galamsey Capita of Ghana.
The Bole-Bamboi native, in the present-day Savannah Region, would be shortly helicoptered into the Central Region, where Mr. Mahama would fork up Akyem-Abuakwa diamond and cocoa money to plug up Galamsey mine pits. In this brazen exhibition of inveterate hatred for both his most formidable political opponent, to wit, the then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and the entire State of Akyem-Abuakwa, Little Dramani hoped to reduce Okyeman to the most primitive level of human existence in both Ghana and the rest of the global community. It was also part of his ethnocentric divide-and-conquer strategy, a woefully failed political game plan which Little Dramani may very well have inherited from his own late father, an Nkrumah lieutenant and sometimes Northern Regional Minister, Mr. Emmanuel Adama Mahama.
But, of course, Akyemfuo/Okyemfuo – aka the Fighting Leopards/ Warrior Leopards – have been forced to teach a nose-thumbing Little Dramani a lesson that he is high unlikely to forget in 12 lifetimes here on Earth; and it is the inescapable fact that, together with Asanteman, Okyeman constitutes the very matrix or socioeconomic, political and cultural foundations of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial Ghana in ways that this European Airbus SE Payola Solicitor would need at least 20 lifetimes to fully appreciate.
Now, back to Bataan: I sincerely don’t think that Mr. Bernard Allotey Jacobs saw the image of the brutally slain President John Evans Atta-Mills in his dream or trance that admonished him to promptly call it quits from Chairman-General Kwami Sefa Kayi’s PeaceFM-sponsored “Kokrokoo” talking-heads program. For, even as the globally famous protagonist of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novelette “Treasure Island,” John Long Silver, poignantly put it, if I remember my PERSCO literature class accurately, and I was the proud winner of both the English and Literature awards, “Dead Men Don’t Bite!” If, indeed, it was true that Dead Men Could Bite, as Allotey Jacobs would have Ghanaians believe, trust me, Dear Reader, Little Dramani would not be so shamelessly re-gunning for the Presidency.
He would rather be running stark naked in the streets chasing “Aworom,” that is, Waakye-wrapping water-leaves.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
