By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
When Vice-Presidential spokesman John Jinapor cynically counsels the New Patriotic Party (NPP) leadership to start looking for “a very good” psychologist for Nana Akufo-Addo, in the aftermath of Election 2012, Mr. Jinapor speaks with the typical hubris – or arrogance – of a man in quixotic defiance of the stark fact that come Election 2012, Ghanaian voters will be handing the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) it “Red” exit card (See “NPP Needs a Psychologist for Nana Addo - Jinapor” Peacefmonline.com 3/2/11).
To be certain, President John Evans Atta-Mills must have, ironically, albeit inadvertently, been alluding to this looming reality when he melodramatically issued his so-called Red Alert during his third State-of-the-Nation Address.
Actually, what Mr. Jinapor sought, in a classical “Freudian Slip,” to tell Ghanaians is that a three-time Candidate Atta-Mills may be suffering from acute psychosis, largely due to the two crushing defeats that the now-President Atta-Mills endured at the hands of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor. This may also have partly contributed to then-Candidate Atta-Mills’ frequent flights to South African doctors.
And then, of course, we also need to highlight the fact that his skinny edge over Nana Akufo-Addo at the 2008 polls has yet to fully convince Tarkwa-Atta that, indeed, he has both the mandate and what it takes to be President of Ghana.
Predictably, throughout the past two years that he has occupied the old Slave Castle at Osu, President Atta-Mills has continued to pathetically behave like a besieged rebel leader, rather than the substantive Ghanaian chief-of-state.
What is also significant here is the fact that Mr. Jinapor appears to be saying that thus far, in spite of his quite painful defeat at Election 2008, Nana Akufo-Addo still stands tall and proud, whereas President Atta-Mills continues to suffer from an acute crisis in self-confidence and/or abject diffidence.
But that Mr. Jinapor should curiously claim that Nana Akufo-Addo “is desperate to be[come] President and might develop a psychological problem,” clearly flies in the face of the three-time unprecedented Presidential Candidacy of Tarkwa-Atta. And, really, it is the latter who ought to be jittery going into Election2012, particularly with the NDC and President Mills’ shameful demonstration, via the unpardonably scandalous STX-Korean contractual giveaway, that, in fact, Ghanaians are, somehow, too stupid to build decent houses for ourselves!
Somebody had better inform Tarkwa-Atta that the AFRC/P-NDC-slain Mr. I. K. Acheampong wisely and proudly used competent employees of the State Construction Corporation (SCC) to build the Dansoman Estates, at the time the largest project of its kind in the West African sub-region; the North-and-South Suntreso Estates, the Kaneshie Sports Complex, and a host of others dotted across the country.
And so to Mr. Jinapor’s call for a crackerjack psychologist for Nana Akufo-Addo, we solemnly urge the NDC leadership to engage the services of both a first-rate psychiatrist and a neurosurgeon for President Atta-Mills the day after Election 2012! Indeed, we would have recommended Dr. Mustapha, formerly of Korle-Bu, had Messrs. Rawlings and Mills not committed West Africa’s greatest and most diligent neurosurgeon prematurely to the graveyard. We also hope that in deciding to so brazenly release the private medical record of President Atta-Mills, Mr. Jinapor had at least consulted with Vice-President John Dramani Mahama.
*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]. ###