I am iffy about Kwabena Agyepong

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

I am not totally averse to the idea of Mr. Kwabena Agyei Agyepong’s being appointed a cabinet member of the Akufo-Addo Administration. I am simply not sure that him being supposedly knowledgeable about the country’s soccer history necessarily qualifies the man who worked harder than any of the most ardent detractors of the former Justice and Foreign Minister, to attempt to scuttle the presidential ambitions of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, would feel any remarkably comfortable working under a personality for whom he has publicly demonstrated his most abject contempt and utter disrespect (See “NPP Bigwigs Prevent Akufo-Addo from Appointing Kwabena Agyapong” Asempanews.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/15/17).

Likewise, him being an academically and professionally trained engineer does not mean much to me, if also because there is a legion of professionally trained engineers that Nana Akufo-Addo could appoint to the Sports Ministry. But what I most admire about the man is that he has been very consistent with his aversion towards the presidential ambitions of the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-South.

Indeed, so inexorable was his aversion for Nana Akufo-Addo, as deeply reflected in his largely reported remarks about the man, that once or twice I was forced to ask in this very column on this particular subject, whether Mr. Agyapong had mistaken Nana Akufo-Addo for Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, the man who may have directly and specifically authorized the savage abduction and brutal assassination of his father, namely, Justice Agyepong, on the night of June 30, 1982, as vividly detailed by the SIB Report.

On one of those occasions, I caught quite a bit of flak for asking this question, exactly as I had anticipated, but I felt strongly that it was a question that needed to be asked, if only to gravely and poignantly bring his attention to the fact that his ingrained animus clearly seemed to me to have been directed at the wrong target. But for me, personally, what crossed the proverbial line was when Mr. Musah Superior wrote an article bitterly complaining that he had decided not to work under Messrs.

Paul Afoko, the then-substantive National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, and the latter’s second-in-command and NPP’s General-Secretary, Mr. Agyepong, because it eerily appeared that with the connivance of Mr. Afoko, the former Press Secretary of President John Agyekum-Kufuor – if memory serves yours truly accurately – had ordered the portraits of the then-Candidate Akufo-Addo to be taken off the walls of each and every one of the offices of the party’s headquarters.

Mr. Superior’s one great hurt, annoyance and disappointment was that precisely the exact opposite had been afforded then-Candidate John Agyekum-Kufuor before Nana Akufo-Addo. One part of me, however, is of the well-considered opinion that Mr. Agyepong is as victimized as he once attempted to victimize the man against whose presidential ambitions he was the number one sworn enemy.

I also firmly believe that both President Akufo-Addo and Mr. Agyepong have quite a bit in common, in that both the fathers of the two men were notable superior court jurists who were politically persecuted for their morally principled approach to the ministration of justice.

I have written it somewhere before that I personally suffered a psychological crisis that almost prematurely committed me to my grave in the wake of the summary abduction and brutal Mafia-style execution of the three Accra High Court judges and the retired Ghana Army major, and had to leave Prempeh College, where I was a Sixth-Former, for one year.

So, perhaps, I have been an even greater victim of Mr. Agyepong’s venom for Nana Akufo-Addo than these two men themselves. This latter remark may come off to some of my readers as very presumptuous, of course, but it is also partly the reason why I find it extremely difficult to come to terms with my Ghanaian identity, and may never be able to live and work in the country of my birth, first love and upbringing for any remarkable temporal span.

I also take this opportunity to humbly and solemnly plead with Mr. Agyepong’s detractors among the top-echelon membership of the New Patriotic Party to let bygones be bygones. My one earnest request to President Akufo-Addo, though, is for him to first resolve the problems at the party’s headquarters; and then he could have Mr. Agyepong brought fully into the full swing of both party and government affairs.