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

In the wake of the widely reported fire that gutted the mega-mansion of former President Jeremiah John Rawlings, one logically anticipated that other prominent Ghanaian leaders would issue public statements and announcements condoling with the Rawlingses, regardless of creed or ideological suasion. Thus it was all in keeping with diplomatic protocol when former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and the New Patriotic Party’s presidential candidate for Election 2008, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo put forth statements commiserating with the former Ghanaian strongman and pseudo-revolutionary.

What was curious, though, was the ironic attempt by Mr. Kufuor to role-play the director/commissioner of the Ghana Fire Service by officiously telling a program host of the Accra-based Radio Gold-Fm station that it was “very elementary” for investigators not to rule out anything, including “the activities of saboteurs” (See “Fire@JJ’s Crib: Don’t Rule Out Saboteurs - Kufuor” Ghanaweb.com 2/15/10). Needless to say, if Mr. Kufuor thought, indeed, that he would suavely ingratiate himself with the Rawlingses by seeming to be more solicitous than the alleged victims themselves then, it goes without saying that the “Atwima Philosopher” had grossly miscalculated. To be certain, venturing that far only made the former MP for Atwima-Nwabiagya appear more suspicious than any saboteurs – real or imagined – that may lurk behind the evidently massive destruction that the conflagration left in its wake. And here, we are alluding to the fact that barely two years ago, in the wake of the Anloga chieftaincy hostilities, when the then-President Kufuor dispatched a detail of law-enforcement agents to ensure that the mayhem would be contained, Togbui Agbotui accused his successor of invidiously attempting to impose “Asante Colonial Rule” on the people of Anloga.

Still, we must emphasize to our audience the fact that we make the foregoing observation bearing squarely in mind that, indeed, Mr. Kufuor, as a quondam premier himself, might have simply been speaking protectively of himself.

The difference in this instance, however, is that we are dealing with a decidedly ruthless man some of whose cabinet members, including his National Security Advisor, were forensically implicated in the Mafia-style assassination of three Ghanaian Supreme Court judges, all of whom were of Akan ethnicity. And here also, we hasten to significantly add the fact that Mr. Rawlings is of half-Anlo ethnic affiliation as were also the bulk of the alleged conspirators and assassins. We must further highlight the grim fact that it took Mr. Kufuor, then Secretary of Local Government, seven long months following the brutal murder of the judges, as well as the retired Army officer, to resign from the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta.

At any rate, as of yet, we don’t even know precisely the kinds of flammable materials that were being stored in the Rawlingses’ mega-mansion that may well have facilitated its apparently rapid and total conflagration, in order for any of us to be able to either make an objective assessment of the event, let alone pass judgment one way or another. For instance, we know that Mr. Rawlings is among a very few Ghanaian leaders and former leaders routinely afforded the highest level of personal security. What the latter, of course, means regards whether the Ridge mansion also served as some sort of mini-arsenal where volatile materials, including even Weapons of Minimal Destruction (WMDs) were stored. We have also not been publicly apprised of the nature of the materials that went into the construction of the residence.

For this writer, personally, the conflagration may be seen to be far less psychologically traumatizing than the cringingly unsavory fact that, ultimately, it is the virtually destitute Ghanaian taxpayer who would be called upon to foot the reconstruction bill; unless, of course, Nana Konadu could, once again, prevail on at least one of the couple’s teeming well-heeled “friends” to step up to the proverbial plate.

Anyway Mr. Kufuor, who wistfully claimed to have occupied Castle Rawlings during the twenty-seven months that he served as Deputy Foreign Minister under Prime Minister K. A. Busia’s Progress Party (PP), there appears to be an element of nostalgia that must have motivated him to exuberantly role-play the Greater-Accra fire commissioner.

So far, however, the tentative cause of “power fluctuations” that has been suggested for Sunday’s massive fire that theoretically rendered the Rawlingses homeless, does not seem to hold water, as it were. In fact, it has even flared up tempers among the managerial staff of Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO), the local power authority. And the latter seems to have quite a palpable reason to be exasperated, being that none of the other several hundred buildings in the neighborhood were reported to have been torched or set alight as a result of unstable power supply.

Mr. Kufuor also appeared to be catering to their especial, or even unique, mutual class interests, when he reached across their supposed ideological chasm to sympathize with the Rawlingses as follows: “The former President is a responsibility on the state security system. He is a public figure who must be protected always. Once you are privileged to get that high in any society, you become a target, somehow. So when you are checking on a list of probabilities, you [should] never rule out the possibility of some miscreants doing something bad to that family.”

Of course, Mr. Kufuor is only half-right to both assume that high-class status automatically renders one the prime target of possible mayhem, even as governance may aptly be seen not to occur in a vacuum, especially the sort of political power that is almost wholly predicated on Social Darwinism, as the better part of Mr. Rawlings’ tenure definitely was; then also, the implicit notion that, somehow, the rest of Ghanaian society is largely composed of second-class citizens who are far less of an encumbrance on the state security apparatus, smacks of morbid elitism. And, to be certain, attitudinal elitists were never known to be effective fire chiefs or commissioners.

By the way, could Mr. Kufuor imagine, for just a second, what would have happened in Ghana if Mr. Rawlings’ Ridge mega-mansion had burned down during his tenure? Folks, you just think about it! Of course, I know Atwima Kofi is not the most courageous Ghanaian politician at home, but why lower yourself to the embarrassing level of J. J. Agbotui’s water boy?

*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###