Sydney, Otiko merely spoke truth to power

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 4, 2017
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

It is a fact that former President John Dramani Mahama is a jolly “wicked man” who frittered the Ghanaian taxpayer’s hard-earned money in the Guinea-Fowl Scam in the SADA (Savannah Accelerated Development Authority) racket/scheme established by the criminally ungrateful Atta-Mills “presidential spare tire.” And so really, what is new here, my dear friend Sydney Casely-Hayford? (See “Otiko’s Comments Were Insulting – Sydney Casely-Hayford” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/4/17). I have said it time and time again that at another time and under another regime or junta, Mr. Mahama would have summarily been executed by firing squad. He must count himself lucky, rather than having his pack of hoodlums on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC) brazenly and luridly attempting to extort undeserved apologies from Ms. Otiko Afisa Djaba.

My dear friend, have you so soon scandalously forgotten that it was President Mahama, not Ms. Otiko Djaba, who told Ghanaians, in the lead-up to Election 2016, that they had absolutely no democratic and inalienable constitutional right, whatsoever, to criticize the way and manner in which their affairs were being conducted by him and his cabinet, because none of these critics had ever been elected President of the Republic of Ghana? I bet, from the remarks attributed to you by the media, Dear Sydney, that you would also unreservedly agree with me that the preceding was the highest level of praise that any sitting Ghanaian leader in recent memory had unleashed at the very people who offered him the mandate to rule over them. We are also talking about a man who told his main political opponents, namely, Messrs. Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Mahamudu Bawumia, that they would be better off licking his bootstraps than presume themselves to be on the same pedestal as himself.

Now, you see how dramatic the proverbial wheel-of-fortune turns and in so short a time? Come on, Syd, let’s get to brass-tacks: If Little Dramani were not incurably wicked at heart, would he have so cavalierly ridden roughshod over the laws of the land by demanding to have as his private property a bungalow that had been statutorily earmarked as the official residence of the Vice-President of Ghana? And then to have lawlessly occupied the same residence and flatly refused to move into the Flagstaff House, after he was named Interim-President in the wake of the mysterious passing of his immediate boss, to wit, President John Evans Atta-Mills? I mean, Syd, we are talking about something more than sheer wickedness here. We are talking about Satan himself! And Sister Otiko Djaba who grew up within the closest proximity of such sinister emanation is not supposed to have the right to be able to call a spade a spade, merely because the Devil’s incarnate has some fanatical advocates who hear and see no evil on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee? Come on, you know far better than this, Syd!

Some of us also forget that the man rode to power on the crest of supposedly being the sole hope for the massive and rapid development of the northern-half of our country. He also rode on the aegis of northern-ethnic chauvinism and tribal supremacy, when he told his oceanic throng of supporters and sympathizers in Tamale, the northern regional capital, that unless his main challenger, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, reversed presidential-ticket roles, or positions, with his northern-descended running-mate, namely, Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, northern voters would be inexcusably stupid to cast their votes for “That uncircumcised Kabonga.” If these are not the words of a pathologically and a congenitally wicked man, Syd, whose words are those?

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