By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Let's first get one thing clear: the assertion by Dr. Clement Apaak, the so-called Mahama Presidential Staffer, that the members of the Okyeman Youth Association's call for Mr. John Dramani Mahama to proffer an unqualified apology, for rudely tagging the Akyem-Abuakwa royal capital as "the headquarters of Galamsey" is, somehow, politically motivated is nothing short of the abjectly arrogant and unpardonably preposterous (See "'Protest Over Mahama's Galamsey Comment Is Politically Motivated'" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/5/14).
It is preposterous because President Mahama, while he boldly and admirably expressed the practical reality and the painful truth, nevertheless, did so as primarily a tactical politician than a statesman. And on the latter score, it cannot be gainsaid that if he had not meant to take a strategic jab at the citizens and inhabitants of the traditional stronghold of his most formidable political opponent, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the President could have wisely delegated the United Nations-funded water project which he commissioned during his so-called working tour of the "Sunrise" Region to a relevant sector cabinet appointee, such as the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, or even the Minister of Health, or even the Minister for Mines and Environmental Protection.
President Mahama's Galamsey taunt was inescapably motivated by political vindictiveness because in the heat of the 2012 presidential election campaign, when the presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) raised the national contretemps that is the "Kayayei" or female head-porter problem, the Bole-Bamboi native took umbrage and made it seem as if Nana Akufo-Addo, a man already widely perceived to be arrogant, was callously thumbing his nose at Ghanaians of northern descent and/or birth.
Back then, all that the former NPP-Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa South, which includes Kyebi, had said was that in the highly likely event of him being elected president of our august Republic, he intended to focus some of his policy initiatives on the provision of hostel facilities and other quality-of-life improvement measures, including healthcare, for these virtually destitute and sexually exploited female head-porters.
The hypocrisy of Mr. Mahama in pretending as if the Kayayei problem were the exclusive plight and blight of northerners, inheres in the widely known fact that the Kayayei industry, as well as the latter's "Kayanu" counterpart, is widespread across the country, and its primary victims include a high percentage of Ghanaians of southern ethnic and cultural heritage. I have even had several occasions to highlight the fact that I also have a couple of relatives, including at least one first-cousin, a chop-bar fufu pounder, engaged in the Kayanu industry.
I also don't know that anybody has deliberately gone on the warpath with the primary motive or intention of grossly misrepresenting and/or misinterpreting the President in ways that invidiously seek to put him in a bad light. The reality of the matter is that Mr. Mahama, together with the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills, is one of those ardent and fanatical Nkrumacrats sworn to mortal enmity against the scions of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo camp of neoliberal democrats, to the damnable extent of arrogating exclusive credit of "Founding Father" to Ghana's first Prime Minister and President, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah.
This hot-headed group of Nkrumacrats has even caused the unconstitutional institutionalization of the purported birthday of their hero to be celebrated as a national holiday. In other words, there is more than ample forensically sustainable circumstantial evidence indicating the fact that President Mahama's so-called working visit to Kyebi entailed quite a little more than its publicity billing. The visit, in essence, was at best as politically motivated as it was statesmanly. After all, why hadn't the President embarked on his aerial purportedly fact-finding mission to Kyebi much earlier on?
I mean, the man has been Vice-President for three-and-half years, Transitional-President for some six months and, now, substantive President for nearly two years! I also don't know that any apology "extorted" from the President would do any good to the citizens and people of Kyebi, in partiular, and Okyeman, in general. What needs to be done is for the operatives and members of the Okyeman Youth Association to mobilize to ensure that Mr. Mahama receives the barest minimum of votes from Okyeman come Election 2012.
Lastly, but not least of all, or "leastly," Jewish Holocaust survivors have a terse mantra against any savage and primitive entertainment or attempt at reviving Hitler's Third Reich by criminal and pathological neo-Nazis - "Never Again!"
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 5, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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