By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 24, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Nearly every mention of his name by the media has been in connection with one form of wrongdoing or another. There was that time, for instance, when Mr. Stanislav Dogbe was reported to have leaked the package of demands presented to the Government by striking members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) on either his Facebook Wall or his Twitter Account. Back then, a hue-and-cry went up for this nondescript presidential staffer to be disciplined for unprofessionally attempting to undermine the doctors who were justifiably fighting for better conditions of service and a service contract they had been denied by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for decades.

Back then, absolutely nothing was done to whip Mr. Dogbe into line. And so one clearly gets the unmistakable impression that the role of this veritable nuisance at the Flagstaff House is to run interference for President Mahama, who must be having quite a great kick out of having this congenital buffoon go to bat for him at the most desperate moments of his grossly incompetent management of the nation’s affairs. But whether such grotesque comic relief as provided the Mahama Presidency by Mr. Dogbe redounds to the long-term benefit of the denizens of the Flagstaff House remains to be seen.

So far, in the short term, Mr. Dogbe has been a complete nuisance and an embarrassment on the national political scene. The problem here, though, is that the Mahama government is jam-packed with a bunch of cynics and rascals who have absolutely no remarkable or cultured sense of either embarrassment or shame, in spite of their Chief Resident’s pontifical talk about our national image and dignity.

Then there was that time, in the wake of the untimely passing of 37-year-old Mr. Samuel Nuamah, the Ghanaian Times reporter, when Mr. Dogbe, in the jolly company of Dr. Edward Omane-Boamah, the Communications Minister, was reported to have brutally assaulted a younger GBC Radio reporter. Mr. Dogbe would end up destroying the digital audiotape recorder of this young reporter. The latter had been physically assaulted because Mr. Dogbe reportedly claimed that the reporter had rudely presumed to get too close in order to eavesdrop on a conversation he was having with Dr. Omane-Boamah at the 37th Military Hospital, where some of the reporters badly injured in the accident that took Mr. Nuamah’s life were being treated or recuperating.

The Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) would reportedly replace the unfortunate reporter’s digital audio recorder. The Flagstaff House’s Chief-of-Staff would also be reported to have advanced the victim a cash payment for the replacement of the damaged digital audio recorder. Here also, a deafening written cry of protest went up appended with the signatures of some 150 local Ghanaian reporters and journalists. But here also, predictably, President Mahama found it more expedient to thumb his nose at these media operatives whose guts he is widely alleged to deeply resent.

What all this boils down to, of course, is the fact that Mr. Dogbe is clearly a liability to the President. And if the New Patriotic Party’s so-called Communications Directorate, headed by Nana Akomea, were that savvy, they would have made a fetching campaign issue out of the Dogbe Menace; for clearly, the latter seems to operate more by the rules of the jungle than those of a civilized human society.

In his latest anti-media salvo, Mr. Dogbe is reported to have tweeted to the effect that Ghana’s veteran BBC-African Service’s correspondent Mr. Sammy Darko, is a “useless journalist,” simply because the latter has dared to publish a report on the GHC 3.6 million scandalous rebranding of some state-owned and operated Rapid-Transit Buses. It is quite obvious that Mr. Dogbe expected Sammy Darko to have touted this broad daylight robbery of the Ghanaian taxpayer as one of the apex achievements of the Mahama government. A useless or savvy Sammy Darko, dear reader, as usual, we would rather have you be the judge.

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