Northern Leaders and Intellectuals Destroyed President Hilla Limann

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

He responds pretty accurately to the pesky name of “Mosquito.” As for the titular prefix of “General,” I am not sure that the former elementary schoolteacher from Seikwa, Brong-Ahafo, deserves such an obviously oversized accolade; except, of course, when the avid student of modern Ghanaian politics reckons the remarkable extent to which the rabble-rousing hack and general-secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is capable of causing grievous mischief and even havoc on the national political landscape.

On the eve of the Institute for Economic Affairs-sponsored presidential debate in Tamale, for instance, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, that is the birth name of “General Mosquito,” was reported to be smugly telling some NDC youth groups, in the Northern Regional Capital, that “God in His wisdom has shifted political power to the North of the country [in order] to grant equity to the people of Ghana” (See “Presidential Candidates Storm Tamale for IEA Debate” Ghanaweb.com 10/28/12).

Maybe some levelheaded somebody like me ought to inform the unsuspecting captives of Mr. Asiedu-Nketia that in Sept. 1979, Ghanaians went to the polls and massively voted for the first northern-born and bred president by the name of Dr. Hilla Limann. And that until his landmark, or legendary, election, Dr. Limann had spent much of his impeccably scholarly career as an accomplished diplomat in the service of his beloved country.

Needless to say, it was cynical opportunists like General Mosquito who wittingly collaborated with the then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings to undemocratically overthrow the progressively minded and admirably unassuming Dr. Limann. You want to know the deportment of a veritable “Asomdwoehene”? That is a classical model for you. And so it is rather mendaciously ironic for Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to be talking about the need for a Ghanaian president from the North in order to ensure socioeconomic equity in the country.

It is also interesting that General Mosquito would conveniently fail to remind his captive and youthful audience that, indeed, it was northern-Ghanaian soldiers and intellectuals, and their military coup-prone Anlo-Ewe counterparts, who dominated the ranks of the coup-plotters that overthrew the democratically elected Limann-led and Nkrumah-leaning People’s National Party (PNP).

In other words, our unabashed contention here is that the NDC chief scribe is being hypocritical in pretending as if any other political camp, other than the P/NDC, is squarely to be held responsible for having inimically prevented the salutary emergence of Ghanaian leaders of northern descent on the national political scene. Indeed, going into Election 2012, it is people like Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, the Bui Dam Woyome, and even yes, you guessed right, northerners like President John “Paradigm-Shift” Dramani Mahama, who ought to be feared more than all else by progressive-thinking Ghanaians of northern descent.

It is also significant for readers, regardless of ethnic affiliation or geographical location, to bear in mind that the blanket label of “Northerner” is not homogeneous; no, not by any stretch of the imagination because, like everybody else, some Northerners actually disdained and flagrantly discriminated against the immortalized President Hilla (Babini) Limann on the purely gratuitous grounds that as a Sissala native, Dr. Limann was not a “real” northerner. Some have even suggested a foreign identity of either Ivorian or Burkinabe for, perhaps, Ghana’s most scholarly premier, with the singular exception of Prime Minister K. A. Busia, of course.

We ought to also quickly point out the fact that President Nkrumah suffered a similar level of ethnic and/or identity antagonism, or what I have personally dubbed as the “Obama Syndrome,” publicly and shamelessly exhibited by ultra-conservative (read: racist) United States Republicans.

It is also rather unfortunate for Mr. Asiedu-Nketia to suggest that there ought to be elected a northern-born Ghanaian president in order for any remarkable socioeconomic improvements to be effected in the lives of Northern-descended Ghanaians. This abject level of thinking, of course, clearly reflects NDC ideology. For unlike the latter, the Danquah-Dombo-Busia camp has always been about statesmanship and the equitable spread of our national resources. The Kufuor-initiated Bui Dam Project is one shining example of such development equity; the National Health Insurance Scheme is also another exemplary signature of the New Patriotic Party’s unique orientation towards the radical uplift of Ghana’s poor and destitute.

In essence, the populist-oriented Mahama-led National Democratic Congress may talk a good game. But it is the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party that is widely known to put its money where its mouth is.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###