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

That Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku should muster the nerve, and chutzpah, to impugn the presidential campaign heft - or traction - of the twice-defeated Nana Akufo-Addo is simply pathetic, to speak much less of the downright pedestrian. The fact of the matter is that Dr. Apraku's woeful incompetence as an administrator was evidenced by his summary dismissal from the Kufuor cabinet as Trade and NEPAD Minister.

His more competent peers, including Nana Akufo-Addo, were shuffled from one cardinal cabinet portfolio to another. And so it is rather amusing for Dr. Apraku to cheaply and mischievously claim to be capable of filling the giant political shoes of the very personality who summarily booted him out of his government ( See "Akufo-Addo Is a Threat to NPP's 2016 Victory - Apraku's Office" Radioxyzonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/22/14).

Such presumptuous assertion can at best be described as an inexcusable insult to the intelligence of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor; and at the worst, it is tantamount to psychotic self-preening. The fact of the matter is that only Dr. Apraku and his handful of grossly misguided urchins believe in such poppycock.

The former Offinso-North Member of Parliament is also a failed presidential aspirant, and may well have jockeyed to become Nana Akufo-Addo's campaign director in a highly unlikely attempt at climbing over the back of the former Attorney-General and Justice Minister to reach the pinnacle of his ambitions. But, here again, as eloquently and definitively proven by the results of the 2007 New Patriotic Party presidential primary, Dr. Apraku is no viable presidential material. He clearly lacks the temperament and intellectual puissance and/or gravitas required by any holder of the job.

We must also quickly point out that the Election 2012 campaign director of Nana Akufo-Addo is as responsible for the electoral defeat of the candidate as the candidate himself. Dr. Apraku, as already adumbrated, may well have deliberately rigged up his former employer and boss for failure so as to get the chance to ride roughshod over him. The Akan have a saying that "If you do not let your neighbor strike nine, you would also not be able to strike ten." In brief, Dr. Apraku cannot dissociate himself from the presidential campaign record of Nana Akufo-Addo.

Finally, the snub-nosed popinjay must be told in plain and bold language that presidential elections in Fourth-Republican Ghana are decided and won by the popular vote, not by regions. Thus the very notion of President Kufuor's having bequeathed his successor with the mandate of the voters of seven of the country's ten regions, is nothing short of arrant foolery. Does Dr. Apraku put his head on a pillow to sleep at night, or he simply leans it against a rock?

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
March 22, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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