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Opinions of Sunday, 23 March 2008

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Apraku's Logic is Absolutely Sound!

In a recent interview that he granted Ghana’s Joy-Fm radio station, the former NPP minister of Trade and Industry was cynically ridiculed for having, reportedly, stated that the country needed the purchase of a presidential aircraft in order to lift its image among the comity of nations. Even worse, Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku was also reviled for having, allegedly, claimed that Ghana required the ownership of a presidential jet merely because even far poorer nations owned fleets of presidential jets (Ghanaweb.com 3/14/08).

What is quite curious, albeit all-too-predictable, is the fact that although the interview also extensively covered such momentous issues as the remarkable reduction in the level of national poverty by the Kufuor government, under the aegis of the Millennial Development Goals (MDGs), the news and editorial staff of Joy-Fm chose, instead, to highlight the question of whether Ghana deserved the purchase of a presidential jet. Somebody even chose to include this item as a major part of a lengthy news feature in order to facilely explain off what the writer – a self-styled leadership maven – purported to be primarily responsible for coups d’état in Ghana, in particular, and Africa in general.

And here, it is also intriguing to note that these caustic critics neglected to observe the fact that as recently as a little under a decade ago, the government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), whose sole proprietor, literally, shot his way into Ghana’s Osu Castle, had the possession and use of a Gulf-Stream twin-engine, private aircraft, purchased with the hard-earned Ghanaian taxpayer’s money. Significantly, however, it bears adding that the two presidential jets being allegedly requested of Parliament by the Kufuor government would also be fully used by the Ghana Air Force, rather than being boondoggled in the wasteful manner in which Mr. Rawlings’ Gulf-Stream jet was utilized, or more aptly under-utilized.

In sum, it appears that many of Dr. Apraku’s critics are simply miffed by President Kufuor’s flat refusal to use the Gulf-Stream aircraft by way of a hand-me-down from Mr. Rawlings. Interestingly, though, none of the critics has yet explained why they find it perfectly legitimate that Mr. Rawlings, who predicated his “revolutionary” putsch on the aegis of “probity and accountability,” and who executed more Ghanaian citizens than any other leader either before or after his so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), had a right to have a presidential jet at his beck and call but, somehow, President Kufuor does not deserve any such privilege.

The preceding is a significant observation to make, because during the eight years that he served as the democratically elected Ghanaian premier, Mr. Kufuor also served the collective interests of both the West-African sub-region and continental Africa far more effectively and productively than Mr. Rawlings did in twenty years. And here must also be observed the fact of Mr. Kufuor having served two terms as Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and once as Chairman of the African Union (the erstwhile Organization of African Unity).

Through his chairmanship of both the AU and ECOWAS, President Kufuor has been able to play a salutary and constructive role in the resolution of such crises as those which gripped Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and, most recently, the post-electoral inter-ethnic mayhem in Kenya. Of course, in the latter instance, Mr. Kofi Annan, Ghana’s sole Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, played the central role. What we are getting at, with regard to the preceding as well as the following, is that given the role that each of them has recently played in both regional and continental African affairs, it clearly appears that if any Ghanaian leader ought to have appropriated the taxpayer’s money for the purchase of a presidential jet, it no doubt appears that Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor ought to have been that leader. Needless to say, the preceding is not, in any way, to unreservedly concur with Dr. Apraku as to whether, indeed, a country that has woefully and embarrassingly failed to viably operate a national – and public – airline has any legitimate need to even fathom the largely non-commercial purchase of presidential jets.

The preceding notwithstanding, it is rather cynical for most of Dr. Apraku’s critics who proclaim and profess themselves to be ardent Nkrumaist Pan-Africanists (NPAs) to be rather hypocritically railing against the government’s decision to purchase two presidential jets. It is almost as if these rhetorically stentorian Pan-Africanists expect President Kufuor and any NPP leaders who succeed the latter to go about the crucial business of Africa’s regional and continental integration on horseback or even, perhaps, on a mammy wagon!

In an article rather parochially and invidiously titled “Dr. Kofi Aprakufe Hadzidzi Gbale” (whatever the latter means in the Ewe language of its author), which was posted to the Ghanaweb.com edition of March 18, 2008, for instance, the writer rather jejunely sought to know why if it was, indeed, accurate that the government of the New Patriotic Party had halved the poverty rate in Ghana, Mr. Kufuor continued to solicit economic assistance from Western donors on the pretext of Ghana’s socioeconomic development. Obviously, the writer, a nuisance fixture in the Ghanaweb.com chat-room, was confusing the proverbial image of a half-full bottle – or pail – with the latter’s being already filled to capacity.

It was also quite interesting, if also all too predictable, that the writer would flatly ignore Dr. Apraku’s further and indubitably astute observation to the effect that: “While [indeed] poverty has been halved in Ghana…there is [still the prevalence of] extreme poverty in some parts of the country.” And also that it was quite true that “the [remarkable] economic gains [registered by the Kufuor Administration] are generally not well-reflected across the country.”

Of course, the afore-referenced critic conveniently failed to include the preceding in her “analysis” of Dr. Apraku’s Joy-Fm interview because the primary objective of the writer was to seriously undermine the intellectual and political integrity of the Offinso-North NPP-MP. Thus, it was only too predictable that the Rawlings aficionado would also flagitiously ignore Dr. Apraku’s assertion that the NPP government needs at least $250 million (U.S. dollars) to optimally upgrade Ghana’s water supply system.

Needless to say, Dr. Apraku’s critic conveniently failed to highlight the virtual bankrupting of the Tema Oil Refinery, as well as President Kufuor’s, retrospectively, remarkable decision to take Ghana into HIPC obviously because such honest and truthful appraisal would cast a damnable shadow on the ideological and practical integrity of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) across the board.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

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