I am Sorry, but Pres. Kufuor is a P/NDC Hack at Heart

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I hope this article, unlike many earlier equally urgent ones, gets published before July 3, 2008, when President John Agyekum-Kufuor is scheduled to confer some 268 national-merit orders/awards (268 at the last count) on some Ghanaians, including Mr. Kufuor himself, and several foreign nationals. This is quite oddly fascinating and outright unprecedented, because while President Kwame Nkrumah, the man who originally instituted these national-merit awards, was renowned for his inordinate craving for accolades, often undeserved – what with such oversized, self-arrogated traditional monarchical titles as “Osagyefo,” “Kantamanto” and “Oseadeeyo” – not to mention his fervid campaign for the erstwhile Soviet Union’s LENIN PRIZE, until his recent announcement, no Ghanaian premier, since 1957, has caused the bestowal of a national-merit award/honor on himself, of a kind wholly created by himself and rarefied such that only himself and his politically criminal boss of yesteryear, Mr. Jeremiah John Rawlings, would qualify to be conferred with the same.

In any case, it is rather heartening that almost all the leading members of Ghana’s main opposition, including the swashbuckling ex-Flt.-Lt. Rawlings, the man under whose bloody watch, as junta leader, a cabinet member of his so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) engineered the abduction and summary execution of three Ghanaian Supreme Court judges on June 30, 1982. In the ensuing investigations, chaired by Justice Samuel Azu-Crabbe (1918-2005), and the Commission’s Special Investigation Board (SIB) Report, both Messrs. Rawlings and his Chief of National Security, Capt. Kojo Tsikata (as well as another PNDC member, Alolga Akata-Pore), were not so subtly fingered as prime suspects in the abduction and Mafia-style execution of Justices Koranteng-Addow, Agyepong and Sarkodie. And while, indeed, a cabinet operative of the PNDC, Mr. Joachim Amartey Kwei, was almost promptly executed by firing squad, for supposedly authorizing the liquidation of the judges, as well as retired Ghana Army major, Mr. Sam Acquah, reliable sources inside the Azu-Crabbe Commission later strongly indicated that Mr. Amartey Kwei may very likely have been used as a convenient scapegoat. These assassinations were also alleged to be ethnically related, since all the three Supreme Court judges, as well as Major Sam Acquah, were known to be of Akan sub-nationalities.

But what is also worth highlighting is the fact that at the time of the abduction and summary execution of the judges and the retired Army officer, the now-President Kufuor, a former parliamentary deputy opposition leader, was serving with the government of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) as Secretary for Local Government; and unlike Brigadier-General Nunoo-Mensah, then-Chief of Defense Staff, whose cousin, Major Sam Acquah, together with the three Supreme Court judges, was executed at the Bundase Military Range, and who promptly resigned his post, as a direct result of the assassinations, Mr. Kufuor, for reasons best known to the former Kumasi City Council chief executive himself, decided to faithfully truck with Mr. Rawlings’ pack of criminals for another four months, at least! It is not clear whether, like Brigadier-General Nunoo-Mensah, Mr. Kufuor would have promptly resigned his cabinet post had a close relative of his been among the victims of the PNDC executioners.

We now also know that Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the man that Mr. Kufuor allegedly likes to scorn at the least opportunity, had also been on the hit-list of the Rawlings Corporation, particularly vis-à-vis Nana Akufo-Addo’s vigorous attempts to redeem both the persons and property of prominent and diligent Ghanaian citizens who had been capriciously demonized and had their property expropriated by the Rawlings-led so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). It would also be absolutely incredible, to say the least, to hear either President Kufuor or any of his staunch associates and minions pretend to be totally oblivious of Nana Akufo-Addo’s unrivaled achievements in the realm of the protection and preservation of human rights in Ghana over the last 25 years, at least. And was it any wonder that Nana Akufo-Addo, as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, would personally draft the Repeal of the Criminal Libel Law, which effectively and enviably rendered the Kufuor government as, perhaps, the most liberal of its kind in Ghana’s 51-year-old history? And here must also be added the fact that, aside from remarkable economic strides registered by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the last seven-and-half years, the single most distinguishing element between the NPP and the P/NDC lies in the realm of free speech. The latter is what makes Ghanaian politics a bona fide part of 21st-century culture, where the P/NDC simply stuck Ghanaians somewhere between the 19th and the early 20th centuries.

Thus for President Kufuor’s minions to foolishly pretend that the self-confessed politically bumbling Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills has contributed far more and better to the development of Ghana, rather than its outright regression, to speak much less about near-total destruction, is unpardonably criminal. Consequently, Mr. Kufuor’s rather shameless attempt to endorse his publicly recognized ideological opponent, to the flagrant disadvantage of the flagbearer of his own party, is highly likely to become the legacy that most Ghanaians, particularly members and supporters of the NPP, come to readily associate with the now-lame-duck premier in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, this devious Kufuor ploy is wont to further galvanize all well-meaning Ghanaian voters against seriously factoring the aging and increasingly senile president’s political judgment, practically or symbolically, into their electoral decision-making process.

But that Prof. Atta-Mills took nearly three weeks – unless, of course, he was back again in South Africa consulting with his doctors – to consider his acceptance or rejection of the Kufuor-minted award, until the bloody Capt. Kojo “June 30th 1982” Tsikata had promptly and roundly rejected his, in of itself, eerily reflects the fact that the NDC Presidential Candidate may be sorely lacking both moral leadership principles as well as the nimble discipline that comes with being a Commander-in-Chief. In other words, were Ghana under the dire threat of external aggression, how could we guarantee that Prof. Atta-Mills would be desirably forthcoming by way of prompt and resolute response?

In his statement of rejection on behalf of the NDC opposition award nominees, some of whom had earlier on indicated their intention to accepting the “KUFUWARDS,” or President Kufuor’s drossy accolades, the P/NDC General Secretary, Mr. Asiedu Nketia, indicated clearly that his party’s stalwarts were rejecting the awards primarily because Mr. Kufuor, a former “Central Committee Member” of the P/NDC “Presidium,” had woefully failed to ride roughshod over rank-and-file NPP membership protest against the substantive President’s deliberate attempt to railroad the executive and presidential, electoral fortunes of the ruling party. On the foregoing score, “General Mosquito” lamented: “To accept these honors in the face of the controversy generated within the NPP circles[,] following the nominations[,] with the attendant indecent attacks on our leader[,] Prof. Mills[,] by key elements within the NPP, who went on to demand the inclusion of their flagbearer[,] Nana Akufo-Addo[,] in the same category as Prof. Mills, is to condone the hypocrisy and deception of the NPP government” (Ghanaweb.com 6/30/08).

Now talking of “indecent attacks,” we hope Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia was not, in any way, alluding to “Shit-Bombing,” that primitive and punitive staple P/NDC political diet of choice. On the foregoing score, therefore, we are in no way hesitant to strikingly and indisputably linking Mr. Kufuor to the likes of Gen. Obasanjo, Messrs. Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki. And here, at least for once, we are forced to acknowledge the fact that, in terms of “party loyalty,” Mr. Kufuor depressingly pales in significance to Monsieur “Anomaa Anntua Ogyinaho” Rawlings.

*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 the author of 17 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008) and “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. #########################################