It was the caption under the published portrait of Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, the indefinitely suspended member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that mistakenly prompted my wife to believe that the infamous Vidkun Quisling of the NPP was, once again, in trouble with the key operatives of Ghana’s most progressive and democratic ruling party.

The photograph appeared in the October 26 edition of Ghanaweb.com and was captioned “Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe Has Been Suspended from the NPP,” and the news story to which the picture accompanied was titled “Nyaho Tamakloe Cries Over NDC Defeat.”

The story was sourced to DailyGuideAfrica.com, the unabashedly pro-NPP newspaper. It was my wife who got me to read the article in which, as usual, the sometime minor diplomat in the erstwhile John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party was extensively reported to be badmouthing the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party to a reporter from a publication called Politics & Power Magazine.

To be certain, Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe was never a key player among the front-row membership of the New Patriotic Party. You see, no government sends its most astute and skillful diplomatic material to work in such outback countries as Serbia and Montenegro. Rather, such first-rate material is usually dispatched to such major global polities as the United States, Japan, China, Britain, Germany, Russia and France.

Under the tenure of Ghana’s first postcolonial premier, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, for example, the Chinese government sent Mr. Chou Enlai as its Chief Diplomat in Accra. In brief, being sent to a pristine sylvan outpost like Serbia and Montenegro is often a pure diplomatic and political afterthought. And, oh, I forgot to add posting to New York City as Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Nations as one of the prime diplomatic appointments.

What I am, of course, directly driving at here is that this infamous Trokosi Nationalist has absolutely no credibility whatsoever and may very well have been secretly planted in the NPP as a strategic lookout by the Sogakope-Keta-Anloga Mafia Cabal.

And I sincerely don’t think for a split-second that the Rawlings-led Trokosi Nationalist Cabal got even half of their money’s worth. The retired junior-ranked officer of the Ghana Armed Forces claims that the New Patriotic Party’s leadership structure is rigged up such that it is virtually impossible for a northern-descended politician like Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia to ever succeed to the Presidency, once President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo exits the scene. Maybe somebody ought to remind the Ibrahim Mahama lookalike that it was President John Agyekum-Kufuor, of the New Patriotic Party, and not Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), who first named a northern-descended bona fide Ghanaian citizen as his presidential running-mate.

Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe may very well have also forgotten this and so would need to be reminded of the fact that it was the leader of the Trokosi Nationalist Cabal, to wit, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, who fiercely opposed the selection of Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe’s political demigod, namely, former President John Dramani Mahama, as the running-mate of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, in the leadup to the 2008 Presidential election. Back then, it was the Akan-descended Candidate and former Vice-President John Evans Atta-Mils who vehemently, albeit quietly, insisted that come rain or high water, he intended to field the Gonja-born former Rawlings’ Communications Minister as his running-mate. Mr. Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, would later relent when it became patently clear that Candidate Atta-Mills was hell-bent on not being dictated to vis-à-vis his choice of a running-mate. Chairman Rawlings would ignobly declare at the graveside of President Mills that the latter had been a great disappointment as a democratically elected leader of Ghana.

What I am clearly and unabashedly driving at here is that the key operatives of the Akan-dominated New Patriotic Party have a far better track-record of recognizing leadership merit than can be said of the Rawlings-owned and operated National Democratic Congress, so-called, in spite of what former President Agyekum-Kufuor’s inexcusably shabby treatment of the late Vice-President Aliu Mahama may lead some of us to believe. You see, the pathologically ethnocentric Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor is the oddball and the anomaly among the front-rank leadership of the New Patriotic Party and not the rule or the norm. it is also rather pathetic that the Freddie Blay-owned DailyGuideAfrica.com newspaper website would decide to offer prime media play or platform to an incurable political gigolo or prostitute like Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe to make such quixotic claims as President Mahama’s having performed much better than his ideological and political superior and Ghana’s former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, as well as Foreign Minister and Minister of Regional Integration, if memory serves yours truly accurately on the latter executive title.

My good guess here is that maybe it was a very slow news day and the editors of DailyGuideAfrica.com wanted to poignantly capture the genius imbecility of the man who clearly appears to reason with his stomach and the contents of his wallet, rather than his parietal lobe, as expert psychiatrists, psychologists and biologists would put it.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net