By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 25, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

It is quite goose-bumping to hear some of those who deliberately and systematically constituted themselves into diehard detractors of President-Elect Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, pretend as if those of us on the electioneering campaign frontlines have no memory capacity whatsoever. It goes without saying that there is a palpable difference between the sort of veritable politics of personal destruction relentlessly pursued by the insider likes of Messrs. Paul Awentami Afoko, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, Arthur Kobina Kennedy and Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, and venomous surrogates like Mr. Baah-Achamfuor and genuine and healthy dissent. And, oh, I forgot to add the name of the almighty Mr. Sammy Crabbe.

I have deliberately decided to avoid any descriptive or introductory formalities here, because I presume to be primarily addressing the leadership and membership of the Great Elephant Family here. Long before the crowning glory of Nana Akufo-Addo’s presidential-election victory, some members of the self-constituted and self-proclaimed anti-Akufo-Addo Wing of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had already penned and published reams of dissertations and tirades celebrating the political demise of the former NPP-Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa South. This was long before any of his most obvious opponents would dare to do the same.

If Nana Akufo-Addo has any real “political enemies,” as opposed to “ardent political opponents,” truth be told, the past two years have grimly informed those of us avid observers and students of Fourth Republican Ghanaian political culture that these “political enemies” are well among the ranks of the New Patriotic Party. And they are a legion. Akufo-Addo would do himself great good to bear in mind the foregoing empirical testimony, if he is not to repeat the epic but all-too-avoidable blunders of the past. I am not saying or revealing anything new here. Our sages long ago observed that “The beast that would unleash the fatal bite was always lurking with the frills of one’s own cloth.”

I have already said this before and do not intend to belabor the point: That inasmuch as it is an imperative necessity for President-Elect Akufo-Addo to forgive his most virulent detractors, and enemies, as well, it would be even more fatal for him to let his latest blowout political victory get to his head and disarm him in toto. It would also be very dangerous for Nana Akufo-Addo to facilely conflate justice and discipline with the benevolent spirit of forgiveness and conciliation. In all things purely civic and administrative, Akufo-Addo can exhibit the softest and warmest of human kindness. But he ought not to for a split-second forget the morally prohibitive cauldron of mischief and immitigable ill-will through which he had to swim.

I don’t know whether Mr. Afoko really appreciates exactly what Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia meant when the great scholar, sociologist and statesman said that: “The real test of a democracy is not just the right of a minority to disagree, but the right of an individual to disagree with the majority and still feel secure” (See “We Shouldn’t Disappoint Ghanaians – Afoko to NPP” Ultimatefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/25/16). Busia knew precisely what he was talking about, because he once had to flee the country or face imminent imprisonment and certain death at the hands of President Kwame Nkrumah. As it turned out, Dr. J. B. Danquah was not as lucky.

I don’t recall anybody among the vanguard ranks of the membership of the New Patriotic Party making the life of Mr. Afoko, or the lives of any of his virulently anti-Akufo-Addo “associate dissenters” either ungovernable or endangered. Of course, like everybody else, I stand to be corrected.

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