By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In an editorial published in the October 26, 2011 edition of Modernghana.com and captioned “Rawlings Now NPP…Declares NDC MP,” the publisher of the Al-Hajj newspaper rather peevishly claims that since President John Evans Atta-Mills was crested into the seat of governance by his former boss and longtime mentor, an “eccentric” Mr. Jerry John Rawlings “has been on the offensive against the sitting president…for no apparent reason.” Curiously at the same time, Alhaji Bature also claims that “The reason for the former president’s [seemingly incessant verbal assault against his own protégé] is that President Mills has been unable to investigate the ills of the previous NPP government under President Kufuor, the party that he has strangely and ironically been praising for defending him against his own party.”
For starters, precisely why would Alhaji Bature expect Mr. Rawlings to sit duck and not return fire while the very NDC key operatives whom the retired dictator personally handpicked and mentored humiliated and disrespected him? Indeed, what some very thoughtful members of the opposition New Patriotic Party, including the Member of Parliament for Adansi-Asokwa and former Deputy Energy Minister Mr. Kobina Tahir Hammond, have said is that warts and all, the National Democratic Congress and prominent Ghanaian politicians like President Mills and Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, among a legion of others, would never have become as influential, and even important, as they are today had it not been for the political adventurism of the former Ghana Air Force flight-lieutenant.
Such a patently pedestrian acknowledgment of a fundamental fact of history ought not to be grossly misinterpreted to mean a ringing NPP endorsement of the violent and bloody political career of the NDC founding father, as Alhaji Bature’s rather disingenuous editorial clearly and shamelessly appears to imply. It is also rather insolent for Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim, the MP for Tain constituency, in the Brong-Ahafo Region, to snidely claim that key operatives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have curiously resorted to “tenderly” nursing the infamous Butcher-of-Sogakope like a saint, and “are no longer accusing him of the 1987 atrocities.”
The question to logically ask here is whether, indeed, like operatives and sympathizers of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Ibrahim also sincerely believes that his party’s founder committed untold atrocities in 1987, or even the “Kume Preko” massacre of 1995. Needless to say, to cavalierly and self-righteously pretend that, somehow, key NPP operatives have suddenly resorted to whitewashing Mr. Rawlings’ criminal political record in an expedient and opportunistic bid to winning him over defies common sense. And then also, precisely when did Messrs. Bature and Ibrahim come to the sudden realization that Mr. Rawlings was, after all, a forensically culpable criminal suspect who needed to be promptly brought to justice?
To be certain, whether the putative founder of the National Democratic Congress has become “angst-ridden,” as the editor-publisher of the Al-Hajj newspaper sarcastically claims, or feels irreparably “humiliated” by the epic defeat of his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, “at the Sunyani Congress of the NDC,” is not the lookout or hangover of the NPP. Rather, what loud-talking and morally grandstanding pontiffs of political chicanery and sheer canard like Messrs. Ibrahim and Bature ought to be doing right now, is to be frankly looking at themselves in the mirror and boldly and honestly acknowledging their criminal culpability and abject hypocrisy vis-à-vis the fast-crumbling predatory legacy bequeathed Ghanaians by the 19-year terror-reign of Mr. Jerry John Rawlings.
Instead, a cognitively dissonant and morally bankrupt Alhaji Iddrisu Bature and his NDC fellow travelers and political scam-artists seem to prefer to take the easy way out, by blaming the proverbial victims of NDC/CPP fascist corporatism. It is also amusing for Alhaji Bature to liken the fate of Mr. Rawlings to that of Libya’s Col. Muammar Gaddhafy, conveniently and selectively forgetting that both the corporeal and political downfall of the ousted Libyan dictator also involved the lives and fortunes of hundreds of thousands of other Libyans. And, by the way, precisely what makes Alhaji Bature so smugly conclude that the potentially violent demise of the Butcher-of-Sogakope would only give a new lease on life to paid and staunch Rawlings propagandists like the editor-publisher of the Al-Hajj newspaper?
Indeed, Alhaji Bature had better look himself up in the mirror, one more time. For, as Apostle Paul once admonished some of his Christian followers and students: He who believes himself to be firmly rooted to the ground, had better guard him-/herself against an imminent fall. Simple words of wisdom that Mecca-oriented charlatans like Alhaji Bature do not seem to have learned.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected]. ###