Prof. Atta-Mills Can Keep His Condolences

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

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud, and then laughing out my lungs! I am, of course, talking about the abject hypocrisy of the so-called Asomdwoehene (or Prince-of-Peace). On Wednesday, the criminal accomplice of Dzelukope Jeremiah paid glowing tribute to Mr. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, until his recent passing Ghana’s indomitable and resilient Finance Minister. Needless to say, the main difference between Mr. Baah-Wiredu and his P/NDC predecessors is that the Asomdwoehene’s gangster buddies robbed Ghana raw to the bone, while our dear late Finance Minister managed the country’s scarce monetary resources as only an astute cabinet member of the Danquah-Busia Tradition could. Of course, it was no walkover following in the giant footsteps of our man from Akyem-Oda, Oseadeeyo Osafo Maafo. Still, when you are a scion of the Danquah-Busia Tradition, it cannot be gainsaid that your very genetic makeup encapsulates the word COMPETENCE.

And it was primarily for the foregoing reasons that I couldn’t stop myself from laughing when I read Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills’ expression of sympathy to the family of our late brother and Finance Minister. The Ghana News Agency (GNA) report claimed that “Professor John Evans Atta-Mills, presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has described as a great shock the death of Finance Minister Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, whom he said was humble, respectful and a great achiever.” The Asomdwoehene was also reported to have added, “It is a great loss to the nation, Ghana” (Ghanaweb.com 9/24/08).

You see, characteristically, when the Asomdwoehene begins praising his inveterate political opponents in such poetic terms, one immediately has to be wary and chary; for such credit oftentimes points to a much more sinister motive. Thus, if you had thought that paying such a glowing tribute to Mr. Baah-Wiredu was either a visceral or a purely gut reaction from the perennial presidential candidate of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), then my dear reader, I’m afraid to have to frankly tell you, upfront, that you’re more the sucker for such naivety.

Needless to say, whenever the Asomdwoehene has praised his political opponents, it has almost invariably and predictably constituted a devious and mischievous preamble to him taking the ultimate credit for himself! That was precisely why after ranting and rambling about Mr. Baah-Wiredu’s death being a great loss to the nation, the Asomdwoehene quickly jumped to the real motive behind such fulsome praise or eulogy.

“You know, Baah-Wiredu was one of my students at Legon. And he was one heck of a brilliant student. A genius. Almost. So I was not surprised at all that he excelled wherever he found himself.”

Dear reader, forget about the glaring fact that by the time that our late Finance Minister arrived on the campus of the college that Dr. J. B. Danquah built, and which the Asomdwoehene himself proudly attended, Mr. Baah-Wiredu was virtually his own man. And need I also apprise my dear reader of the quite grim and glaring fact that if you were born at Pakyi (Anglicized as “Peki”) Number Two in the Asante-Akyem North District, it is not exactly the same as having been born on the silver shores of the Cape Coast municipality. And this pretty much explains why I was a tad miffed to hear the ironic and ever-contradictory and conflicted Asomdwoehene pretending to the Ghana News Agency reporter that, somehow, Mr. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu was brilliant because he had been a student of the “Knicker-Knicker Man.”

Needless to say, Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu was brilliant because, like this writer, he had managed to gain admission into Sixth-Form (or the Advanced Level course of study) at the world-renowned Prempeh College. And whereas he had entered “Otumfuo University College” from Kumasi High School, this writer had done the same, about a decade later, from Okwawu-Nkwatia’s St. Peter’s School. Then for this writer also, there is the ancestral nexus of “Pakyi,” for it was from the same Pakyi, whether Number One, Two, or even Three, that my royal ancestors migrated to Peki Blengo in present-day Volta Region; and on the latter score, I am talking about the Kwadwo Dei or Deiga branch of the Peki paramountcy. And so in a true and real historical sense, the untimely passing of Mr. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, in Shakespearean parlance, is an epic “touching loss.” Add to the foregoing, the fact of my maternal grandfather, the Rev. T. H. Sintim – of Asiakwa, Begoro and Asante-Mampong – having spent a remarkable part of his clerical and educational career in Asante-Akyem, and the spinal chills that I have been feeling following the passing of Mr. Baah-Wiredu begin to make perfect sense. Or don’t they?

Anyway, now square up the Asomdwoehene’s description of our dear late Finance Minister as a “brilliant, humble” and “great achiever” with the following comment from Prof. Atta-Mills barely 24 hours following the South Africa passing of Mr. Baah-Wiredu: “We are facing a multifaceted crisis which is the result of incompetence, mismanagement, insensitivity and corruption by the Kufuor Administration. Nobody associated with this administration [including, of course, the great-achieving Mr. Baah-Wiredu] can claim an alibi. They are all involved,” the Asomdwoehene told a rally of P/NDC supporters and sympathizers. He leeringly added,” The action of the NPP will come back to haunt them.” Then almost immediately, sensing the fact of Ghanaians being putatively and innately loathe and averse to political vindictiveness, the ailing Asomdwoehene quickly moved, rhetorically speaking, that is, to cover his tracks. “My P/NDC government will not be a vindictive government.” But, of course, the London University doctoral-degree holder had already been rather too stolid and too late to effectively lid up his vindictive machinations. And with his hemorrhoidal and ugly butts in full glare of his Amasaman audience, the Asomdwoehene squawked, “I will scrap all the petroleum taxes imposed on you by Mr. Kufuor and his Manhyia Forest Mafia. I will also increase access to secondary education in the country by building 300 new high schools, if given the nod in December.”

Some smart-aleck among his audience was heard screaming at the top of his voice, “Yo Prof., but we gave you and Dzelukope Jeremiah 20 years in the Osu Slave Castle. And see the mess you bastards dealt Ghana’s economy.” “Shut up, you NPP scumbag, before I reintroduce my Cash-and-Carry Christmas bonus package! You twat, don’t you understand this is all about politics, the pure art of shooting, shit-bombing, extorting and spending?!”

*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 the author of 18 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Reena: Letters to an Indian-American Gal” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.