By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 20, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
We are beginning to fully appreciate the kind of stuff of which the newly elected two topmost administrators at the New Patriotic Party (NPP) headquarters, namely, Messrs. Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyapong are made, now that the honeymoon has long been over. And I bet the likes of Messrs. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey and Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie (aka Sir John) are having a jolly time of it; I mean the sort of chaotic incompetence that Mr. Cash's boys are humoring us with. Which is not to say that it is any more amusing than Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan's devious throwing of the ballot in favor of Little Dramani. To be certain, Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong are more dangerous to party cohesion than cholera, Ebola virus and Dr. Afari-Gyan combined. We shall have more to say about these two rascals in due course.
The preceding sounds quite curious, I can almost hear you hiss under your breath. But not necessarily palatable, of course. Well, for Mr. Afoko, "professionalism" in Ghana's largest opposition political party means peremptorily demanding that all headquarters staff who have been in office during the past four years proceed on leave, no ifs and buts. Just shut up and take these orders from above; you don't mean Lancaster House, or do you? Of course, you know what I am getting at... I intend to pull no punches, leave no holes unplugged, let the chips fall where they may... I have had it up to my neck, and the devil seems to be nowhere near half of his mischief. Yes, just shut up and take these orders from Upper-East, where the sun first shines before it reaches all else.
On the foregoing score, NPP National Youth Organizer Samuel "Sammy" Awuku can hardly be contested when he asserts that Chairman Afoko eerily sounds like a junta commander barking out orders by "revolutionary" edict. It is almost certain to observe that this was not what many a staunch dues-paying NPP member bargained for in the lead-up to the Tamale Delegates' Congress that brought Hatchet Man Afoko [pronounced like "Akoko," chicken or fowl in the Akan language] and Chief Executioner Agyapong to power. I also don't believe that it makes a lot of sense for a party struggling to wrest power from a cutthroat competitor like the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has any fighting chance by forcibly and massively pushing most of its administrative veterans out of party headquarters and onto the margins of both the party's and our national political culture.
Well, it is what it is.... I mean, this clearly seems like the amateurish beginnings of a catastrophic coup d'etat; and, of course, knowing which major NPP faction to which Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong belong, one has no other choice but to candidly conclude that these two men - note that I am not calling them "gentlemen," for what they seem to be clearly up to is not about the work or business of gentlemen - are hell-bent on dislodging any headquarters officials or administrators known to be passionately in favor of Akufo-Addo's third shot at the presidency.
Well, I see two things happening here, if the New Patriotic Party is to have a fighting chance at Election 2016. At least one of these Kejetia rascals must be severely sanctioned by the NPP-National Executive Council, including suspension and possible dismissal, depending on which of the duo is forensically envisaged to be squarely responsible for the raging bad blood among the top-hierarchy membership of the party, or core party members and supporters had better begin taking a hard look at the ramshackle affairs of the party and the intentions of the "invisible" party principals lined up behind Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong and begin forming a new political party right away!
For it is inescapably clear that Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong are staunchly focused on anything and evrything except party unity and cohesion. Besides, what is even more disturbing is the lame and hollow attempt by Chairman Afoko to deny full responsibility for his apparently gross administrative ineptitude, by faulting some faceless "infiltrators" belonging to the ruling National Democratic Congress. In sum, is Mr. Afoko telling the nation and the world that he has been taking his marching orders from Messrs. Kwabena Adjei and Johnson Asiedu-Nketia?
Already some party notables are aspersing whether the NPP General-Secretary has not gone to bed with some key operatives of the ruling party. As far-fetched as this may seem, nonetheless, such possibility cannot be wholly ruled out of the question; there is precedent for this in the indisputable fact of Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong's prized but woefully failed presidential race horse's having once (twice by some reliable accounts) walked out of the NPP in order to solicit personal favors from Little Dramani.
And, oh, I have a ready name for the new Danquah-Busia-Dombo party that I have in mind, one with cache which far transcends the rather amateurish and lackluster name of New Patriotic Party. It is almost certain that whoever created the latter name was in a nature-call's rush; I mean, the name sounds too boondocky and schoolboyish. What I have in mind has traditional traction and moral heft - the United Party of Ghana (UPG). I have never felt ideologically comfortable with New Patriotic Paty. The name rings with the cheap hollowness of a mannikin/mannequin; and it had better be packed up and shoved into the garbage heap of history.
I am on the verge of shipping out. The new NPP leadership at party headquarters does not represent the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition that I have always felt proud of being a part of. Truth be told: I am out!!!
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