On Akuffo Addo’s Leadership Style

By Dr. Samuel Adjei Sarfo

I have reflected on Akuffo-Addo’s alleged drug use, and it does not bother me as much as his leadership style. Mind you, unlike many commentators here on the web, I have never tried any drugs myself, and that should constitute lack of life’s experience rather than any triumph over the allures of immorality…. And if Akuffo-Addo’s drug use in the past does not affect his lucidity in the present, we should give him the chance to lead Ghana. After all, we had a drug junkie lead this country for nearly two decades, and the party which he formed (on his vision as a junkie) remains in government today. We should therefore get used to the fact that past use of drugs by those who run this country is fairly common……But with Akuffo-Addo in particular, my problem with him is his weakness as a leader, which is far more important to me than his alleged drug use.

I believe sincerely that had Nana Aluffo-Addo called to order the undemocratic tendencies of the sitting parliamentarians who rigged the democratic process in their various constituencies in 2008, he would have been the president of Ghana instead of John Atta Mills. A typical modus operandi of the party hierarchy in the count down to the 2008 elections was to put in place a Machiavellian process whereby any challenger to a sitting MP was hamstrung at the initial stages of the nominating process in order to pave the way for a party favorites to be declared unopposed. In this instance, democratic principles which had endured since the party’s founding was jettisoned out of the window and a bastardized process substituted in its place to ensure a controlled outcome that favored those deemed as the Party’s hereditary princes.
A particular scenario that typified this travesty of democracy played out in the New Juaben North Constituency. There, Hackman Owusu Agyemang successfully hijacked the democratic principle by imposing himself on the people. After his failed bid to secure the presidential nomination, Hackman returned to the constituency and began his machination to steal the parliamentary nomination. He led a protest march against his main opponent, Dr Samuel Annor on the spurious allegation that Annor did not resign his position as Regional Treasurer before filing his nomination papers for the New Juaben parliamentary contest. Against all evidence to the contrary, Hackman succeeded in getting the party machinery behind him, and by a blatant act of political deceit, he assembled his henchmen to coronate him as unopposed. This he did at a time when opposing delegates were in Accra for a court hearing about his illegal nomination. All this happened in June, 2008 when I visited Ghana. Concerned about this mockery of democracy, I organized a demonstration against the fake declaration of Hackman Owusu Agyemang as unopposed parliamentary candidate for the New Juaben North Constituency. I only wanted democratic principle to prevail, and hoped that a level playing ground would be facilitated for the people to nominate any candidate of their choice. The response of Hackman Owusu Agyemang, together with Nana Adjei Boateng, then Municipal Chief Executive, was to send over three hundred members of the police force to break up our legitimate demonstration. The police action was so reckless that I still consider it a miracle that nobody was killed or hurt. I was the Ward Chairman of Effiduase NPP in the year 2000. I worked tirelessly in that year to ensure that Hackman Owusu Agyemang and Adjei Boateng got their positions. I supported them in any way I knew how before leaving the country in January of 2002. Because I disagreed with their undemocratic posturing, they displayed bestial power to have me crushed together with other NPP foot soldiers who put them where they were. Our crime was that we were asking for the democratic principle to prevail. If the cohorts of the Rawlings dictatorship had come down upon any demonstration we held with that horde of power, it would not have surprised me in the least; but coming as it were from my own NPP members whom I personally knew, I was extremely shocked and disillusioned. When I left Ghana in July of 2008, I knew that love for power had changed my party’s concept of democracy: the term had become an expression of mere convenience for the NPP hierarchy, and that whenever it suited their purposes, the party was more prone than the NDC to sacrifice its democratic principles….
All over Ghana , a scenario such as the one in New Juaben North played out in the various constituencies. The democratic principle by which the Danquah-Busia tradition had always prided itself was thrown to the dogs. Self-appointed princes of the NPP, mostly made up of the old guards, shut the door on the face of the new guards, or told them to join the last spot in a dynastic queue in which the old guards put themselves in front. The NPP became the personal property of a few selected ones who regaled Ghanaians with fictional narratives of their achievements in the formation of the party. Those who dared to disagree with them were branded as insurgents and dismissed from the party, and those who had the good sense to resign were told good riddance. Hackman Owusu Agyemang captured the renegade mood within the party hierarchy when he implied of Kyeremanteng’s resignation that the party had lost better men than Kyeremanteng and still survived; therefore Kyeremanteng should not be “begged” to return to the party.
On hindsight, such undemocratic tenets and infantile vituperations may sound absurd and cavalier, a phonic byte emanating from a party bent on losing an election it was destined to win. But in the heat of passion of an over-confident paty executive, the signs of defeat were never seen nor even imagined, and the murmuring of public discontent transformed in their ears into empty rhetoric of the malcontent. Of strange significance was how Nana Akuffo-Addo himself failed to stem the tide of tyranny unleashed by the party executive. I knew and admired Nana Akuffo-Addo as a man capable of becoming the country’s philosopher king. In 1996, during my student years at the University of Cape Coast, I was campus Branch Chairman of NPP. We organized for then presidential candidate Kufuor to visit campus. After I delivered a speech, Akuffo-Addo stood up and unabashedly declared that he did not know how to replicate the quality and delivery of my speech. Flattered beyond measure, I became his staunch supporter and acolyte. However, my misgivings about his leadership style evolved as I observed him preside over the failure of the party’s democratic structures that led to the NPP’s defeat in 2008.
To borrow Akuffo-Addo’s own words, the 2008 election was NPP’s to lose, and the party gurus worked very hard to lose it.
Now the party has worked to reinvent itself in the transparent manner in which it ensured free and fair elections of the flag-bearer and the parliamentary candidates. But questions should still remain about the ability of Akuffo-Addo to discipline the party bigwigs should he become President of Ghana. To me, he registered an extreme nonchalance for the democratic process at a time when he was in the strongest position to do so. The mere fact that he corrected his mistake in the recent party elections does not mean much. It is analogous to the humility of a poor person; it has not been authenticated by the position of power, and therefore is it meaningless….In 1982, when I was a young man of nineteen, there was this arrogant business man who used to frequent the family house of the Annors at Effiduase-Koforidua. I had been friends with Dr. Annor’s younger brother Kwasi Nyannor since Class One and used to frequent the same family house to visit my friend. Whenever this rich man came to visit this family house, he would bar all of us from the house because he claimed we would steal his money. When I visited Ghana in December 2010, an emaciated man full of grave humility came to visit with Dr. Annor’s older brother called J.B. I could not make him out, until J.B. revealed to me that he was the rich guy who used to bar all of us from the family house because he suspected we would steal his money. Am I the fool to consider this man truly humble? No; his humility is a cover-up for him to be given another ladder of opportunity which he will quickly kick away as soon as he gets to the top. There is no reason why the same cannot be said of Akuffo-Addo. After all, he has never apologized for leading the party to defeat by his cronyism, and his subsequent adherence to the democratic principles should be seen as just another cover for him to get to the top post. The party will still remain divided long after he becomes president, and the followers of Allan Kyermanteng, his arch adversary, will have no role to play under an Akuffo-Addo presidency; so they should stop dreaming. Indeed, they will fare far better under an Atta Mills government because they will never be sorely misled or disappointed. Remember also that the NPP has not parted ways with the archaic notion that the Party belongs to a group of dotards who have the authority to open or shut the door of privilege to others, or to stifle the voice of the people. In short, the party has not remade itself, and its undemocratic currents dangerously lurks under the surface, to re-emerge under the demonstrably weak leadership of Nana Akuffo-Addo.
And I daresay that with the expulsion of the Great Satan from the NDC, many of us see no difference between the NDC and NPP politics. NDC is now shorn of its dictatorship and idol worship. Besides, its internal cohesiveness is far ahead of the NPP. Although its governance has been lousy so far, there is a vast room for improvement. And Boakye Gyan is right in joining the NDC. Many others will soon follow him.

Samuel Adjei Sarfo, Juris Doctor, lives in Austin, Texas. You can email him at sarfadjei@yahoo.com