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Opinions of Sunday, 22 March 2015

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Mr. Gyamesi, Here Is Your Hanging Rope

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 12, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I have written about the "prophetic" pronouncements of Rev. Owusu-Bempah, and so I do not intend to belabor the same here, other than to simply observe that Rev. Owusu-Bempah has an inalienable right, just like every Ghanaian citizen, to freely express his divine or prophetic revelations whenever and wherever he chooses. What is unorthodox and deeply and inexcusably offensive is the belief by some anti-Akufo-Addo Trokosi Nationalists that, somehow, they have the exclusive right to freely and publicly indulge their inveterate hatred for Ghana's main opposition leader, and that any "prophetic" proclamation that favors their prime political opponent ought to, perforce, be deemed to be tantamount to heresy against their party and its leaders.

In the latest of such expression of morbid, albeit all-too-predictable, hatred for Nana Akufo-Addo, Mr. Robert Gyamesi, described as both the District Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) and District Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for Adansi-Akrofuom, is reported to have vowed to commit suicide by hanging if Rev. Owusu-Bempah's "prophetic" revelation of a presidential-election victory for Nana Akufo-Addo in 2016 is accordingly fulfilled (See "I'll Hang Myself If Nana Addo Wins 2016 Election - NADMO Coordinator" Atinkaonline.com 3/3/15).

What is predictably amusing here is that his last or surname clearly gives the ethnic identity of Mr. Gyamesi away; the man is definitely an Anlo-Ewe! And the voting pattern of the Ewe-dominated Volta Region clearly shows that, in fact, Mr. Gyamesi's apparently rabid animosity towards the New Patriotic Party's Presidential Candidate for Election 2016 may be broadly more of an anti-Akan hatred than it is necessarily individual or specifically targeted against Nana Akufo-Addo. If the foregoing observation has validity, then clearly Mr. Gyamesi is pursuing his politics of personal hatred in the wrong geographical location in Ghana. And so the logical question becomes: Why has Mr. Gyamesi elected to practice his politics of anti-Akan hatred in a region that also happens to be both the stronghold of the main opposition New Patriotic Party and the most populous Akan region in the country?

And, also, why are the targets of his political abuse allowing Mr. Gyamesi to get away with his unpardonable act of criminality? I pose the preceding question because I vividly remember the brutal mauling of Dr. Samuel "Sammy" Ohene, the younger brother of Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, former editor of the government-owned Daily Graphic, in the heat of Election 2008 in the Abutia township of the Volta Region. The Head of the Psychiatry Department of the University of Ghana had gone to his hometown to monitor the ballot on behalf of his party, the then-ruling Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party. He would nearly lose his vision in one eye.

It is also rather amusing that Mr. Gyamesi would call on the "Christian Council of Ghana to examine the mental faculty" of Rev. Owusu-Bempah, merely because Mr. Gyamesi disagrees with the "prophetic" pronouncements of the former which is in favor of the most formidable political opponent of his boss, to wit, President John Dramani Mahama. If this erratic and callow expression of his anger does not clinically reflect the acute mental instability of Mr. Gyamesi, then, dear reader, tell me what else does? In brief, are we being made to understand by the Adansi-Akrofuom NADMO petty chief that the Christian Council of Ghana is the institutional sister of Osu-Asylum or the Accra Mental Hospital?

Mr. Gyamesi also claims that so glaringly abundant have been the achievements of President Mahama that it is nigh to the a virtual impossibility for Ghanaian voters to reject the leadership of the former Rawlings Communications Minister. Mr. Gyamesi is, of course, entitled to his personal opinion, especially in view of the fact that he is double-salaried as both an NDC District Secretary and a Mahama pork-barrel appointee or sinecure recipient. And just why would anybody not expect an unconscionable freeloader like Mr. Gyamesi to believe that President Mahama's is the best administration in Ghana's postcolonial history?

Then, also, it constitutes the height of arrogance for Mr. Gyamesi to presume to reserve the exclusive right to dislike, or even resent, Rev. Owusu-Bempah, simply because the Founder and Leader of the Glorious World Ministries International is perceived by the Mahama freeloader to be unfavorably disposed towards the fortunes of the ruling National Democratic Congress. And on the latter count, it goes without saying that it is this myopic and dictatorial mindset of the overwhelming majority of its key operatives that makes the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress the party that deserves to be promptly kick-boxed out of the Jubilee-Flagstaff come December 2016.

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