... Does Jake know something we do not know?
New Patriotic Party (NPP) renegade Kofi Wayo's stunning revelation on Radio Gold that Minister of Information (without Presidential Affairs) Jake Otanka "Goebbels" Obetsebi-Lamptey referred to President John Ageyekum Kufuor as "this Ashanti Bastard" on August 8th, at 9 p.m., in his house, when he was drinking gin, has set tongues wagging as to the paternity of the President.

Some members of the public interviewed by the Ghana Palaver expressed the view that in Akan, "bastard" means "mpena ba" or a child born outside marriage, and wondered whether by Jake's statement, he implied that the President was not the son of his mother's husband, Nana Agyekum, the late Chief of the Oyoko clan of Ashanti. Others claimed that the President's mother may have had children with different men, and that is why Jake may have made that reference. A third view, coming mostly from Kumasi, was that it was really the President's mother who was a Kufuor, Kufuor being the President's mother's father's (that is President Kufuor's maternal grandfather's) name. Some explanation is therefore needed as to how all her children came to be named after their mother instead of their father or fathers as the case may be.

In our bid to find out more about the President's paternity, we were directed to the "Apagyafiem" of Ashanti. Before we could make formal contact, however, an anonymous informant told us that the clue to the issue of the President's paternity lay in the answer to the question of why President Kufuor and his brothers did not make any attempt to ascend to the Apagya stool to which they were otherwise perfectly legitimately entitled when it became vacant, but rather allowed their nephew, Kwame Kyeretwie, to occupy it. The informant also asked us to try and find out why the President was known as "Kofi Diawuo" in his childhood. Ghana Palaver decided at that point that we were getting into forbidden territory and therefore abandoned the efforts to make contact with the "Apagyafiem". At this stage, therefore, it is only the President who can clear the air about the mystery surrounding his father.

Whatever be the case, it seems that Kofi Wayo's indiscreet revelation of Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey's innermost thoughts about his boss' paternity may have opened up a can of worms. One excited interviewee put it this way: "Jerry was called a 'Scottish Bastard' by the anti-Rawlings private media because he was born outside marriage, but at least we all knew his father was Scottish and was not married to his mother and we knew who he was, his real name being Mr. John. But who is Kufuor's father? Or does Jake know something that the rest of us do not know?" Your guess is as good as ours.