By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
That was not the initial account offered by police officers involved in the investigation of the stabbing death of the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa North to the Ghanaian public, at least as widely reported by the media.
And so it is rather strange to hear somebody by the name of Pastor Kwabena Owusu-Adjei tell us that contrary to what we had earlier on been given to understand, to wit, that some powerful elements inside the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) well appeared to have contracted the young killers of Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, that, somehow, the assassins of the grandson of legendary Ghanaian statesman and anticolonial liberation spearhead Dr. J. B. Danquah, may actually have been liquidated by elements close to President-Elect Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “JB Danquah’s Death a Ritual Murder for Akufo-Addo’s Victory – Pastor” Rainbowradioonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/17/16).
I must promptly state here for the benefit and moral edification of my readers that I am the grandnephew of Barima Ohemeng (1895-1943) of Akyem-Apedwa, widely recognized in Ghanaian history books as Nana Akyea-Mensah, and so I do not take allegations of ritual murders lightly. I must also note here that both the brutally slain Abuakwa-North MP and President-Elect Akufo-Addo are my blood relatives.
By the same token, I recognize the clearly stereotypical attempt by the accuser to tarnish the image and reputation of the accused by the mischievous transference or projection of the sins and crimes of the proverbial forefathers onto their descendants. But perhaps what is most significant to observe here is the fact that we also learn that since at least 2012, Pastor Owusu-Adjei has either been “wailing” or “railing” against the presidential ambitions of Nana Akufo-Addo.
There is absolutely nothing new or unusual about such protestations, be they clerically championed or instigated by both ordinary Ghanaian citizens and the political and ideological opponents of the apparent “revelatory target” of Pastor Owusu-Adjei.
For me, though, what is also equally significant to underscore here is the fact that Nana Akufo-Addo did not begin his contestation for the presidency of Ghana in 2012, but rather as far back as 1998, when the former New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa South put up a strong challenge for the presidential nomination of the then-main opposition New Patriotic Party against then-Candidate John Agyekum-Kufuor and lost.
Now, what the foregoing means is that if, indeed, Pastor Owusu-Adjei, of the Hezekiah Apostolic Ministry, began making his vehement opposition to the presidential ambitions of the former Foreign Minister public only in 2012, then the accuser’s protestation clearly comes at least 14 years after the fact.
In other words, it is of great interest to know why for 14 years Pastor Owusu-Adjei does not appear to have raised any alarm or public protests against the presidential ambitions of President-Elect Akufo-Addo. In legal parlance or context, Pastor Owusu-Adjei’s allegedly “divine revelation” would not even qualify to be classified as “hearsay.”
It is decidedly the psychological product of the figment of his own evidently febrile and poetic/flighty imagination, especially where the clerical accuser also claims that, somehow, it was rather the “Hon. Isaac Akoto Osei” or a “chosen John” that Divine Providence had willed or pre-destined to govern the country. Maybe somebody ought to remind the founding-leader of the Hezekiah Apostolic Ministry that the Ghanaian state is not a theocracy thoroughly peopled by Christian converts with the names of “John” and “Isaac.” We are a Christian-majority country all right, but we are culturally first and foremost a pre-Christian and a pre-Afropeanized people.
In other words, it is about time “Neo-Primitive” clergymen or “prophets” like Pastor Owusu-Adjei squarely came to terms with the fact that a remarkable percentage of Ghanaian citizens are well-educated and enlightened humans. For Ghanaians in the latter category of citizenship, Divine Providence reveals His/Her ways to us through the faculties of our Common Sense and our systematically cultivated ability to critically decide whom our leaders ought to be.
After all, one does not suppose Pastor Owusu-Adjei to be implying that Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution was afforded us via the conduct of some Theistic Rituals on Mount Afadzato or the Atiwa Range.
If Pastor Kwabena Owusu-Adjei has any forensically sustainable evidence implicating President-Elect Akufo-Addo, by all means, let him take it to a legitimately constituted court of law and have Nana Akufo-Addo indicted and prosecuted. Mischievously resorting to Pseudo-Christocentric Theology to character assassinate would not fly.
Needless to say, Pastor Owusu-Adjei is inalienably entitled to his own choices of candidates for the presidency; but, of course, we also hope he realizes the fact that in postcolonial or modern Ghana, our leaders are democratically chosen by us, the citizens, in the polling booth, not via jaundiced psychopathic fabrications suavely paraded as “Divine Revelation.”
May God save us from ourselves!