Fighting Out of One's League

I have never, for a moment, doubted the fact that legions of Ghanaians benefited from the tyrannical and extortionate rule of Dzelukope Jeremiah, otherwise known as Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings. And this largely explains why many of my critics, particularly the most vitriolic and irrational ones, have been whining about my take on the sanguinary tenure of the Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) lacking what these beneficiaries routinely call “objectivity.”

By “objectivity,” it appears as if these critics want me to insist against historical truth, reality and common sense that, indeed, Mr. Rawlings’ swashbuckling regime brought innumerable benefits in its wake and trail. The foregoing pretty much explains the apparent lunacy of a nondescript Ghanaweb.com “writer” who recently began forging a certain-to-be-hopeless career out of the composition of downright incoherent rejoinders to my articles.

But even before we proceed any further, it ought to be made known to these pathetic scavengers of Dzelukope Jeremiah’s pseudo-revolution, in no uncertain terms, that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe sees absolutely no redeeming features in the veritable highway robbery that was the regime of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) and, before the latter, the nihilistic junta of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

Incidentally, not many Ghanaians, outside the Forces, are aware of the patent fact that the Provisional National Defense Council (the original PNDC) had absolutely no relevance, whatsoever, for the progressive destiny of Ghana, as Dzelukope Jeremiah criminally managed to hoodwink Ghanaians into believing. And that, in fact, the PNDC was squarely predicated upon the aegis of another purely military welfare organization called the National Defense Council (NDC), which exclusively oversees the professional welfare of members of the Ghana Armed Forces. In sum, Mr. Rawlings simply capitalized on the general innocence of the proverbial average Ghanaian in order to ride roughshod and priggishly over the rest of us.

It is also interesting that Mr. English Middle Name, Chief Dzelukope Jeremiah’s contract sniper, should also accuse yours truly of the crime of being “reclusive.” Now, this is very fascinating, because such accusation presumes that yours truly has no right to privacy, or that the only mode of establishing his existential legitimacy is to, somehow, seek out the bloody beneficiaries of Mr. Rawlings’ reign-of-terror and summary expropriation, in hopes of ingratiating himself, or hobnobbing, with them. What chutzpah!

You see, what the likes of Mr. English Middle Name, a veritable jungle bunny of the most primitive breed, ought to be told in no uncertain terms, is that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe does not truck with either pathological criminals and/or their beneficiaries, sympathizers and accomplices. He never did when knowledge of the same was frontally placed before him, and he does not intend to ever do so for as long as he has oxygen in his lungs and human blood in his veins.

In brief, the career rejoinder-writer appears to be emotionally wracked with gratuitous envy and jealousy, to which cankers the present writer does not possess any remedy, nor is he inclined towards frittering away his precious time in search of the same for the addle-brained Mr. English Middle Name.

Still, the SOB ought to be commended for voluntarily opting to be my proverbial monkey. For readers, by now, must have noticed how the poor brat relishes regurgitating the captions of my articles; the “poor boy,” as one of the Ghanaweb.com chat-room junkies described him, appears to be totally devoid of both his own voice and a creative imagination. Then again, who ever heard of anybody accusing a jungle bunny of being possessed of – all faculties – a creative imagination?

What also fascinated yours truly is the fact that Mr. English Middle Name should also drag into his self-provoked fray a fairly well-known Ghanaian poet and novelist, to what effect, the “writer” has yet to explain to his audience. For nowhere in my two previous articles on the subject of Mr. English Middle Name’s fecal festivity, so far, has this poet-novelist been mentioned. What is, however, quite intriguing is that the afore-referenced artiste, for most of the 1980s, had a brace of plagiarism hung around his neck (see Adzo Zagbede-Thomas, West Africa magazine). Still, the reason for my considerable loss of respect for this otherwise quite a competent writer, has to do with the latter’s divisive insistence, during the political ferment of the Acheampong era, that he, the afore-referenced writer, was “first and foremost an Ewe before a Ghanaian.” He might just as well have legitimately claimed to have been “first and foremost a Sierra Leonean before a Ghanaian” or even an Ewe.

And so exactly why Mr. Middle English Name would suppose yours truly to be eager to be ranked among the company of an Ewe micro-nationalist is up to the SOB himself to explain to his audience.

Ultimately, what I have unabashedly maintained is that Mr. Ayi Kwei Armah is Ghana’s greatest novelist and scholar-artiste, as well as activist. And if this also insults the piddling intelligence of Mr. English Middle Name, then, needless to say, that is the reprobate jungle bunny’s own problem!

*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. He is the author of 13 books, including “Abe: Reflections on Love”(Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008), his 10th and latest collection of poetry. E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.