Johnson Asiedu Nketia
Before he self-righteously and falsely resorts cheaply to the blame-game regarding just who is the real architect of the rancid political culture of vigilantism in Ghana, maybe somebody mature with a sharp memory capacity ought to remind Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the Methuselah-like General-Secretary of the country’s main opposition political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), that the NDC was hewn or hacked out of a bloody military junta, to wit, the Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), that effectively imposed a veritable Reign-of-Terror on Ghanaians for some 11 years, that is, from December 31, 1981 to January 7, 1992 or thereabouts (See “NDC Doesn’t ‘Own, Sponsor’ Militias; Some Members Do – Asiedu-Nketia” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/22/19).
We must also pointedly underscore the fact that as a vigilante terrorist organization, the Provisional National Defense Council never structurally or institutionally disbanded before the latter morphed into its current form; it simply went through a vacuous nominal process of re-designation or name change from Provisional National Defense Council to National Democratic Congress. Practically speaking, this politically deceptive process of superficial name change was strikingly akin to pouring the same old wine into new bottles, simply relabeling it and selling the same stale wine to Ghanaian citizens and, in particular, the Ghanaian electorate at a prohibitive price which we are still excruciatingly paying for with our very lifeblood.
I have written about the fact that the name “National Defense Council,” as a major part of the name of the Provisional National Defense Council junta, was shamelessly plagiarized from the name of a military welfare association within the Ghana Armed Forces. At any rate, if anything at all, it was freedom-fighting Ghanaian citizens like President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the late Mr. William “Paa Wille” Ofori-Atta, Nana Akufo-Addo’s eldest maternal uncle and a bona fide member of the celebrated Big Six Founding Fathers of Modern Ghana, and, of course, the late Prof. Albert A. Adu-Boahen, a JB Danquah understudy and research assistant, among a platoon of other yeomanly Ghanaian statesmen and stateswomen, that most deserve to be unreservedly commended for making Ghana the kind of enviable beacon of constitutional democracy that our beloved country is today, and not the recklessly hawkish, megalomaniacal and dictatorial terrorists like the founders and key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress,
Indeed, contrary to what Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, also popularly known as General Mosquito, would have Ghanaians and the global community believe, it was the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council and the latter’s directly descended political progeny, the National Democratic Congress, that engineered and pioneered the murderous political culture of vigilantism in Ghana. To be certain, the words “vigilante” and “vigilantism” did not exist in any sustainable rhetorical usage prior to the emergence of either of the two aforementioned Rawlings-led political organizations or the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). I mean, what were those so-called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), but blood-dripping vigilante terrorist organizations? As well as the so-called People’s Defense Committees (PDCs) that effectively usurped the law-enforcement role and functions of the Ghana Police Service?
And the so-called People’s Tribunals that effectively maligned and thoroughly undermined the credibility and integrity of Ghana’s Judicial System? You see, a political party or organization whose founders deliberately abduct and selectively execute Supreme and High Court Judges has absolutely no moral authority to lecture the rest of us on the imperative need for the maintenance of an acceptable level of national security. In other words, the one single bane of our national security menace is coeval or contemporaneous with the institutional establishment and apparatus of the National Democratic Congress. What this means is that any serious attempt to restoring peace and security to the near-ideal pre-Rawlings levels would, perforce, necessitate the definitive proscription of the institutional apparatus of the National Democratic Congress.
Now, let’s get this straight: Political instability in Ghana did not begin with the morally and militarily unimpeachable invitation by some leaders of the security department of the then savagely persecuted leaders and members, supporters and sympathizers of the New Patriotic Party, the party of Ghana’s true democratic freedom fighters, by the military-fatigues-wearing operatives of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress, of the three South-African mercenaries in March 2016. A long overdue invitation which, by the way, was intended to significantly upgrade the “Boot-for-Boot” self-defensive preparedness of the most democratic and progressive political party in Ghana. I mean, who created the 64th Battalion of Infantry, also known as the Commando Forces, headed by the Cuban-trained cold-calculating clinical terrorist called Lt.-Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey? Who can contradict this indisputable truth of the true history of the National Democratic Congress?
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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York