Owuraku Amofa coming for NDC Congress

It will be all surprises the array of personalities who will be converging in Accra to elect a flag bearer for Ghana’s leading opposition party, besides the shocks that would culminate in fufus, kenkeys, tuo zaafis going waste after the votes have been counted and the battle lost and won.

Blockbuster politician, Owuraku Amofa, the man who physically stood up to the tantrums of ex-President Jerry Rawlings on the eve of the Kufuor victory and flew out of the country unceremoniously, will be crashlanding at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) any minute from now to attend the historic National Democratic Congress (NDC) coming up Saturday 21 December 2002 in Accra.

According to The Ghanaian Chronicle sources at the NDC headquarters and the US branch of the party, the swashbuckling EGLE man will be leading a pack of US-based faithful to do what he Owuraku Amofa is good at- stirring controversy- and, ultimately “putting sand into the gari of ex-President Rawlings, which means making sure that delegates over whom he wields some influence vote against “Jerry and his Mills.”

Owuraku Amofa lost in the 1996 parliamentary elections to Nana Akufo Addo in an electoral drama that involved an alleged attempt to spirit away ballot boxes and a resultant sabre-rattling between the two smooth talking, extrovert Okyeman lawyers. The EGLE chief, however, caught the eye of his then President and life founder of the party, Rawlings, earning a deputy ministerial position in the tourism sector.

Differences over the way forward for the NDC after the stocktaking defeat of the party in Abuakwa led to a clash between him and his political mentor and father, in the full glare of top notch party people in the NDC.

Peeved and angry, Owuraku Amofa, with tail tucked between his legs, vanished from the country amidst speculation, melodrama and controversy, as party people kept denying the fact that the man had beaten prying eyes and jumped on board the next plane to Bill Clinton’s America.

Amofa was the only EGLE candidate in the 1996 and 2000 elections in which he lost after securing a cheap slot in 1992, courtesy the boycott of that year’s parliamentary elections by the then opposition parties led by the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

He was an extremely vocal character when he was in Parliament, always up on his heels to extol the virtues of the so-called Progressive Alliance- government even when the odds were against it. Unfortunately, he fell out of favour with the Old Man, leading to a clash and a fight by night.