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Opinions of Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Columnist: Boateng, Chris Gyamfi

Akuffo Addo, NPP and competence are diametrically opposed to each other.

It’s often said that those living in glass houses must not indulge in throwing stones but the NPP’s defeated 2008 presidential candidate William Addo Dankwa Akuffo, has defied this time tested aphorism by indicting the NDC as being incompetent when he carried his unbridled ambitions to his home enclave in the Eastern Region on Monday 9/24/12. With the massive failures and gross incompetence exhibited by Mr. All-Die-Be-Die Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo William during the tenure of his NPP government in which he featured prominently which saw them chasing a whirlwind of a loan from a Hair Dressing Salon in the UK without a definitive contact address as well as a fake IFC loan, one would have thought that he would be the last person to describe another party in Ghana as incompetent.

Ironically, "Oluman" Akuffo Addo did not disclose to his unsuspecting audience how “competent” his NPP government was when his colleague Minister in charge of finance Yaw Osafo Marfo signed an agreement in German without understanding their language nor what he was signing for. Similarly, Mr. Yen Akanfuo Akuffo Addo failed to tell his audience how “competent” he was as Attorney General when he titled a charge sheet as the President V. Tsatsu Tsikata, making it looked as if the issue at stake was a personal matter between the accused and the president of Ghana at the time. This shameful display of ignorance and incompetence by Akuffo Addo culminated in Chronicle’s Kofi Koomson questioning his intelligence while calling for his head. Was it competence that led to him being floored in the courts by Tsatsu Tsikata resulting in him being replaced? Or was he competent enough as the Foreign Affairs Minister when he stayed aloof in the comforts of his office and did not seek justice for fellow Ghanaians who were murdered in the Gambia? Alas! Any competent leader would not auction an asset bequeathed to him by his father for peanuts but would have rather demonstrated entrepreneurial skills and calculated steps to revamp that frail hotel to yield fruitful results but what did competent Akuffo Addo do? Your guess is as good as mine.

The little actions and inactions catalogued above regarding the father of wino-hit-and-run Gyankromah tell whether the man is competent or not but let’s consider more of the man’s “competence” and “achievements” when he had the chance to hold public offices in our dear country. And for the reminders, this is the man the Americans described as shabby, lackadaisical, disorganized and practicing ethnocentric politics to help him win power!

Akuffo Addo and his surrogates who follow him blindly shouting from the rooftops that they are hungry but are able to organize flashy and extravagant weddings, would want unsuspecting Ghanaians to think the man is an accomplished politician who has naturally being ordained to rule the country. Indeed, his NPP kumbaya singers tout and enumerate his credentials dubbing him “yenim no firir tete”, loosely translated to mean he’s been know around the block as an achiever. Interestingly, neither does himself nor his praise singers tell us what his known for or any significant accomplishments he has chalked for the country or his Akyem Abuakwa constituency that he represented as MP for close to twelve years. In fact, any careful and objective observers can only describe the man as a sour loser, coldhearted and selfish individual who engages in irresponsible, inciting and violent statements, as well as polarizing acts in order to achieve his selfish and myopic lifelong political dreams. Otherwise, how can a man who wants to rule a whole nation appeal to only a segment of the citizenry-his Akan enclave, culminating in his shameful “yen Akanfuo” (we the Akans) and violent prone “all-die-be-die” statement? Can Akuffo Addo, as a competent leader, address the issues raised below when he was the Attorney General of Ghana, that:

1. As a leading member of NPP and practically the presidential candidate when tons of cocaine got missing from the police headquarters under CCTV. Did he make any comments on such a glaring negligence, if not an act of criminal conspiracy? Or did he make efforts to apprehend the culprits or to retrieve the cocaine? What did he know about this daylight robbery as A-G?

2. Benjilo was a hardened drug dealer in the 1990s. That drug criminal was arrested, tried, jailed by a court of competent jurisdiction and his drug-funded property in Accra confiscated. During the eight years of NPP rule, part of which Nana Addo served as Attorney-General, Benjilo's property was de-confiscated. As a competent A-G, can he tell us what informed his decision to de-confiscate those assets?

3. What about the three NPP Dzorwulu branch executives who were busted with narcotics at KIA in February 2002 when Akufo-Addo was AG?

4. Is it not interesting that under his watch as AG, all those three arrested NPP drug queens just vanished into thin air? Their dockets also just magically disappeared like a phantom?

5. What did Mr. Addo do as a competent leader, about that case to send a strong and clear signal to Ghana and the world that his government abhorred drug trafficking and that he was dead set to punish anyone, regardless of proximity to the ruling class, who dared engage in the dangerous narcotic trafficking? Mr. William Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo must succinctly be told that he is irritatingly nauseating with his calumny, deceptions and polarizing politics and that we know who a competent leader is but he is surely not one of them so he must stop bugging our ears with his pretences and double talks. He is reminded that discerning Ghanaians are set to jettison and send him off with a one way ticket from the political scene and that he is cautioned to watch his feet at the door on his way out.

Chris Gyamfi Boateng, aka Koo Boateng-Philadelphia