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

Maybe he thinks Ghanaians have too short a memory to remember the fact that he began his service as the Communications Director for the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, by describing former President John Agyekum-Kufuor as an extremely uncomely personality the mere sight of whose face provoked both a retch and resentment in the notorious Trokosi Nationalist.

And so, naturally, it must have come as quite a surprise to most Ghanaians to hear Mr. Koku Anyidoho call on Nana Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), to publicly declare his stance by what Mr. Anyidoho rather curiously terms as the “ethnocentric comments” by some leading members of the NPP, including Messrs. Abayifa Karbo, Atta-Akyea and Sammy Awuku (See “Akufo-Addo Must State His Position on Ethnocentric Comments – Anyidoho” MyJoyOnline.com/Modernghana.com 10/30/12).

Needless to say, unless his eardrums have been corked up with Akple since he imperiously assumed his communications director’s post at the presidency, Mr. Anyidoho would have heard Nana Akufo-Addo state his position on the question of ethnicity and national politics time without number. To be certain, even in the lead-up to Election 2008, when the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills was busy whipping up Fante sub-ethnic sentiments with the rather lurid mantra of “Adzepa dze owo ’fie a oye,” to wit, “A good thing had better be kept within the clan,” Nana Akufo-Addo was vigorously and insistently reminding Ghanaians of our common cross-ethnic and cross-cultural identity and destiny.

Of course, Akufo-Addo’s electoral fortunes would be badly and deeply hurt by the brazen ethnic chauvinism of the so-called Asomdwoehene. On a personal level, too, the former Justice and Foreign minister was deeply hurt to the quick, especially as the then-Candidate Mills stood smirking in the sprawling courtyard of the Manhyia Palace of the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, while former President Jerry John Rawlings, the Asomdwoehene’s mentor and chief patron, hurled one abuse upon another at Nana Akufo-Addo, including this most notorious salvo: “What is his name, that dwarf?”

And so, really, Mr. Anyidoho insufferably insults the intelligence of the former NPP-MP from Akyem-Abuakwa South by rudely presuming to deplume a bird and asking Nana Akufo-Addo to name the same. It is also not clear what Mr. Anyidoho means, when he asserts that purported “anti-Voltarian[sic]” comments made by the three gentlemen stalwarts of the New Patriotic Party named in this article stand to seriously jeopardize a supposedly harmonious cross-ethnic relations within the Ghana Armed Forces that “has taken the country a long time to build,” since Mr. Anyidoho is not a veteran or known expert of public and human relations in the Ghana Armed Forces.

We learn that his father is a brigadier-general, or some such senior officer, of the Ghana Armed Forces; but whether the mere fact of his father’s military experience translates into transferable military experience on the part of the younger Mr. Anyidoho, ought to be further clarified. The preceding notwithstanding, if the younger Mr. Anyidoho, by his thinly veiled reference to the Ghana Armed Forces, is hereby threatening the stability of a future Akufo-Addo administration, then the “Keta School Boy” had better be warned that any dastardly attempt to either endanger the life of Nana Akufo-Addo and/or an NPP government led by the latter, would be fiercely resisted; and the architects of such treasonous misadventure would dearly pay for the same.

Indeed, the onward march of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian democracy is both immutable and non-negotiable!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###