By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 7, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The indefinitely suspended National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Paul Afoko, took his tomfoolery to another level and stage when he unilaterally appointed external lawyers to represent the party in a lawsuit brought against it by one of his own surrogates, Mr. Oppong-Kyekyeku, of the Kufuor-Kyerematen faction of the New Patriotic Party. What makes this situation worthy of the prompt and summary expulsion of the Bolgatanga native, is the fact that in mischievously deciding to unilaterally appoint lawyers to represent the party in a litigation suit in which the plaintiff, Mr. Oppong-Kyekyeku, was a veritable Afoko/ Atwima-Mafia proxy, the suspended chairman had flagrantly usurped the standing, or entrenched, powers of the NPP’s Constitutional and Legal Committee to doing so (See “ ‘Defiant’ Afoko Appointed Lawyers for NPP in Court – Tedam Fumes” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/5/15).

Like the illegitimate King MacBeth of the Shakespearean drama of the same eponymous title, Mr. Paul Afoko clearly appears to be suffering from harassment by the ghost of Mr. Adams Mahama, the Upper-East regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party, who was acid-doused to death by the younger brother of the indefinitely suspended NPP National Chairman, Mr. Gregory Afoko. The latter was widely known to sport a criminal record, having also reportedly spent considerable time in the slammer. And yet, Big Brother Paul promptly hopped onto the media airwaves, in the wake of Mr. Mahama’s assassination, to vehemently deny that the younger Mr. Afoko had anything to do with the savage slaying of the then-Upper East NPP regional chairman. Elder Brother Paul had also been widely known to be the inveterate political – and now it also appears the personal – nemesis of Mr. Adams Mahama. And so even if he had not mired himself in his legion breaches of party protocol, Mr. Afoko would still have thoroughly rendered himself irreparably as damaged goods heading into Election 2016. And this obviously is the reason why some key operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), including Messrs. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, Koku Anyidoho and Twum-Boafo have been disconsolately mourning the comatose political career of the man believed to have been, perhaps, the biggest mole ever planted by the Mahama posse to effectively derail Nana Akufo-Addo’s third and likely final shot at the Flagstaff House.

And now Elder Brother Paul is also going to add on the ghost of Mr. Abubakar Saddiq, the Kumasi-Asawase-resident Akufo-Addo loyalist who was reportedly stabbed to death by agents loyal to Monsieur Akoko and President John Dramani Mahama. Anyway, what brought me to the second part of this column on the same subject has to do with the financial sources and/or resources that Mr. Afoko may have tapped into when he unilaterally decided to engage the services of “external” lawyers to represent the New Patriotic Party in a case in which Mr. Afoko was also the plaintiff. We have decided to put the adjective “external” in quotes because as pointed out earlier, the Kumasi firm solicited by Mr. Afoko for the sole purpose of destroying the 2016 presidential campaign of Nana Akufo-Addo, belongs to Mr. S. K. Boafo, the former Asante Regional Minister who served in the latter capacity under President John Agyekum-Kufuor. We hope the funding sources for this criminal charade came from somewhere other than NPP coffers, else Mr. Afoko will have to prepare to face vigorous prosecution for grand larceny.

Lawyer Boafo could also not claim not have been aware of any flagrant breach of protocol, when Mr. Afoko decided to go over the heads of the party’s Constitutional and Legal Committee. I obviously don’t know much about law, that is, the professional practice of the same; but it well appears to me that in deciding to deliberately and mischievously collaborate with Mr. Afoko to criminally ruin the hard-fought reputation and political standing of the New Patriotic Party, Lawyer Boafo and his firm had undeniably declared war on the party and what the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Traditionalists stand for. In this, the Atwima Mafia may be aptly envisaged to be far more inimical to the collective national interest of the New Patriotic Party, and Ghanaians at large, than the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress. Afroko’s sponsors and paymasters, in sum, ought to be squarely seen and regarded as the most dangerous enemies of the masses of longsuffering and hardworking Ghanaians in search of socioeconomic, cultural and moral relief and repair.