We have heard this before, but…

It is that time of the year, once more, when Ghanaian clerics literally crawl over one another to mostly tell us which of our leaders have been marked out for the proverbial ultimate sacrifice by the edict of Divine Providence, barring any call for national prayers to avert the same.

So far, it is the Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah, a passionate Akufo-Addo partisan, who has grabbed the media spotlight with his umpteenth “prophecy” about some Akufo-Addo detractors who are hell-bent on taking the life of arguably the most dynamic and visionary leader of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.

This is not the first of such Owusu Bempah prophecies verging on the life of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “There is a Plot to Poison President Akufo-Addo – Rev. Owusu Bempah” Ghanaweb.com 1/1/19). Among the Akan, we have a dictum that says that “When one was bidding farewell to one’s maker before setting off on one’s journey to this world, there was no one else present as a witness with the subject.” Rev. Owusu Bempah says that he received his prophecy from the God that he has been faithfully worshipping for as long as anybody can remember. So, who are we to impugn the credibility and/or authenticity of such prophecy?

You see, you don’t have to believe in prophecy to believe that there are, indeed, a legion number of Ghanaian citizens, both close political associates and total strangers, who would rather have President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo dead than alive for any number of reasons. Two years ago, Rev. Owusu Bempah made a similar prediction. It was shortly after a close relative of both the President and yours truly had called to express grave concern about a quite powerful operative and notorious factional leader among the vanguard ranks of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who had suddenly taken to regularly visiting the Nima residence of the then newly elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

I bluntly told my female relative that inasmuch as I had absolutely no forensic evidence to cause me to suspect that the person in question was hell-bent on fatally poisoning our world-famous relative, nevertheless, I could equally not rule out the possibility of the subject of such grave concern harboring some sinister designs against Nana Akufo-Addo, for that individual in question had clearly and glaringly demonstrated to all critical and studious observers of the Ghanaian political scene that he would rather have any other personality at the helm of our country’s affairs, except Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, as fate and/or Divine Providence would have it, Nana Akufo-Addo is presently the bona fide and substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana and may very well be poised to handily clinching a second term in office, gauging by his remarkable policy initiatives and achievements on the ground these past couple of years. And we may also readily and vividly recall, in the leadup to the December 27, 2018, Oti Region’s Plebiscite – among several other referenda in the country on the same day – some two young men were arrested somewhere in the Volta Region or neighboring Togo for attempting to cast a spell at a shrine on the President and several other key political appointees and executive operatives.

My own take on these matters is that prophecy or no prophecy, any President cannot be protected well enough. There is always a place in this life for prayers, be it Christocentric prayers or traditional Tigare-type of prayers. Such is the reality of the world in which we were born and raised.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net