Opinions of Friday, 2 December 2016

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

We don’t need this kind of “koobi” prophecy

Prophet Emmanuel Badu-Kobi Prophet Emmanuel Badu-Kobi

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

I don’t doubt for a split-second that Prophet Emmanuel Badu-Kobi is sure of his powers to see beyond the obvious and superficial. But when it comes to reasoned political prognostication, he would do far better to let the pundits handle matters the way they ought to be.

The other day, we heard the founder of the Sarkumono-based Glorious Wave Church International tell all who cared to listen that some filial impasse between the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and his late father, the erudite Oxbridge-educated Justice Edward Akufo-Addo, was to blame for the apparently Sisyphean difficulty that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was having in clinching a presidential-election victory.

And now Prophet Badu-Kobi tells us that the overwhelming majority of the vanguard leadership of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party has been bought off by the key operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) and that the NPP was doomed to be in opposition in perpetuity – (See “NDC Has Bought Majority of NPP Bigwigs – Prophet Badu-Kobi” Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/28/16).

There are several interesting implications here, none of which means much to those of us who believe that short of the sort of ballot-rigging shenanigans that have characterized much of the country’s Fourth-Republican democratic dispensation, it is the ordinary Ghanaian voter who will determine the political destiny of the nation for the next four years come December 7, 2016.

One of the implications here, listening to Prophet Badu-Kobi, is that if Nana Akufo-Addo consents to some nondescript form of necromantic ritual being performed to repair the purportedly damaged relationship between the elder and younger Messrs. Akufo-Addo, somehow, the younger Mr. Akufo-Addo’s route to the Flagstaff House would smoothen up and be made for easy sailing.

One wishes that the leader of the Glorious Waves Church International had alerted our protagonist to this purportedly grievous problem in the lead-up to Election 2008.

And just why would whoever made such revelation to Prophet Badu-Kobi decide to torturously tantalize Nana Akufo-Addo with the presidency for such an unbearably long time, and to the damnable privation of the ordinary Ghanaian citizen, before finally giving the proverbial lie to Prophet Badu-Kobi?

Even more significant, does it mean that once the necessary necromantic rituals have been performed to supposedly reunite Nana Akufo-Addo with his distinguished late father, there would be absolutely nothing else for the three-time presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party to worry about?

Then also, does the preceding “reality” of the prophetic realm mean that the late President John Evans Atta-Mills also had a grievous relationship problem with his father, thus the need for the former Legon Law School professor to take three shots at the presidency before finally realizing his dream, that is, assuming that, indeed, the decision to be named President of Ghana was actually that of Professor Mills himself, rather than of a dictatorial Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, a la the latter’s infamous Swedru Declaration?

And precisely how had the future President Mills resolved this spiritual impasse or relationship problem with his late father? Or in this instance, the relationship problem was one between mother and son?

Well, in his latest prophecy, Mr. Badu-Kobi tells us that the overwhelming majority of the NPP’s bigwigs have had their palms generously greased by the Mahama Posse, thus they are ready to massively vote for the retention of unarguably the most morally depraved and administratively incompetent leader of the country’s Fourth-Republican dispensation, while their own party stayed on the economically deprived margins of our kind of winner-takes-all political regime.

I mean, we are talking about a man who never passed up the least opportunity to take bribes and to facilely compromise the integrity of his office, as well as denude, or deny, the hardworking Ghanaian taxpayer of the inalienable right not to be wantonly and criminally cheated out of national development contracts undertaken by those civically and democratically mandated to undertake the same on his/her behalf?

Prophet Badu-Kobi also claims that per his “divine” revelation, the overwhelming majority of these NPP bigwigs would rather receive handouts from their National Democratic Congress counterparts than work hard enough to regain the democratic reins of governance in order to actively and positively facilitate the radical transformation of the fortunes of the suffering masses of Ghanaians as a whole, thereby putting themselves in the proverbial driver’s seat by calling the shots themselves, rather than remaining as the famished and groveling recipients of the NDC looting brigade!

Prophet Badu-Kobi may obviously have forgotten the following age-old Akan proverb but we haven’t. “The back of your hand may taste sweet, but such sweetness hardly compares with the sweetness of your palms.” Well, we prefer to leave the final judgment to the reader.