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

(I wrote this story mid-March but had forgotten all about it, until I just discovered it in one of my media folders. I have decided to have it belatedly published for the sake of the record books)

After clearing Mr. Paul Afoko to vie for the National Chairmanship of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Secretary to the NPP-National Vetting Committee has been reported to be claiming that Mr. Afoko's clearance was not based on any Interpol Report (See "Interpol Has Not Cleared Paul Afoko - NPP Vetting Committee" Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/14/14).

I don't know why Mr. Martin Adjei Mensah Korsah thinks that the Interpol has a bounden obligation to respond to a request for any criminal record on Mr. Afoko, rather than such request being made through either President John Dramani Mahama or Ghana's Inspector-General of Police, as the Interpol is widely known to deal with the highest levels of government operatives, rather than non-governing political organizations.

And also, just why would the NPP-National Vetting Committee officially issue a statement clearing Mr. Afoko to contest the National Chairmanship of the party, while at the same time mischievously seeking to blight and/or impugn such clearance with the rather unprofessional public claim that Interpol has yet to issue any response to the NPP-Vetting Committee's request? Is this some sort of cheap, albeit vicious, psychological warfare aimed at ensuring at all costs that a determined Mr Afoko fails in his bid for the party's National Chairmanship?

And, if, indeed, the NPP-Vetting Committee deemed a response from Interpol to be central to its clearance of the hamstrung contestant, why would the committee's membership decide to clear Mr. Afoko, to begin with? Well, at this stage of its high-stakes game, the best that the NPP-National Vetting Committee can hope for, short of epically damaging the party's image and reputation before the masses of Ghanaian voters, is for the alleged petitioner, Mr. David Gyasi, to personally contact whatever authorities he claims had arrested and/or imprisoned his target of criminal accusation to promptly issue an authentic record reflecting the same to the Vetting committee.

The latter may also be stoking the fires of a likely defamation suit against the accuser. Under these circumstances, not only has the credibility and integrity of the NPP-National Vetting Committee been seriously damaged, the party's electoral fortunes in the northern-half of the country, in the lead-up to Election 2016, may well be under serious threat. Which, of course, is not to suggest that the Afoko faux-pas has added any significant problem to the already perennially dismal performance of the NPP Up-North. What it means is that the NPP-National Vetting Commitee operatives may well be in cahoots with some key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

And I would not be the least bit surprised, if it should come to light that, indeed, some backroom horse-trading has been going on between some cynical NPP operatives and their NDC counterparts, in much the same way that ideological lines quickly evaporate anytime that talk of "gratuity" packages - actually sinecures - come up for discussion among our members in parliament, on the one hand, and the rest of the nation at large.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
March 14, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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