By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 1, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The widely reported physical assault of New Patriotic Party’s Communications Team member Mr. Hopeson Adorye by some armed members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) in the Dormaa-Central Constituency of the Brong-Ahafo Region on Thursday, September 22, must not go unpunished (See “Military Men Attack NPP’s Hopeson Adorye” Atinkaonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/22/16). And the military-uniform-addicted President John Dramani Mahama must take full responsibility for illegally, unprofessionally and unconstitutionally politicizing the membership of the GAF against his most formidable political opponents.

Under absolutely no circumstances, short of necessary self-defense, should any members of our taxpayer-sponsored military be either sicced or sick themselves on any law-abiding Ghanaian citizen. We are told that the savage assaulting of Mr. Adorye occurred when the latter decided to question a woman he suspected to be of Ivorian nationality who was being registered to vote in the December 7 general election. Details were still sketchy as of this writing, and so it is not clear whether the said Ivorian woman was being registered to vote by either authorized personnel of Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC) or some self-appointed local operatives or surrogates of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Either way, Mr. Adorye, a bona fide Ghanaian citizen and a prominent member of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), had every right to intervene if he had good or legitimate reason to believe that non-Ghanaian nationals were being illegally registered to vote. Nana Akufo-Addo, the 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, if he has not already done so, should fire off a letter to Attorney-General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong demanding prompt answers and an immediate investigation into the matter. We are also fervently hoping that matters do not reach a point where every senior member and/or operative of the main opposition New Patriotic Party would be forced to heavily arm him-/herself for self-defensive purposes.

We must further repeat here that Ghana does not belong to either the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress or any other political party or group of Ghanaian citizens, for that matter. The country belongs to each and every Ghanaian citizen who lives in it. What is more, in the sort of Fourth-Republican democratic culture that each and every Ghanaian citizen has signed up for, the dastardly application of brute force to unfairly promote the interests of any single political party or leadership will be fiercely resisted. The days when only partisans of the Rawlings-minted regime of the Provisional/National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) dominated the national political landscape like an imperial monarchy are well behind us.

If the facts and details of the Adorye Case are exactly as widely recounted by press reports, then the least that can be expected of the Accra-based Ghana Armed Forces’ Military High Command is to promptly and dishonorably discharge the uniformed culprits, or we will be forced to impose our own Fatwa on the heads of these veritable nation-wreckers. The hope here is that the victim of this brutal assault took down the particulars of his assailants. The operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress must rest assured that any primitive attempt to declare even a low-level siege against their opposite numbers of the New Patriotic Party will not augur well for the stability and prosperity of the country. And the Mahama Posse had better listen up.

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