By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 23, 2014
It is very amusing to hear the wet-eared thirty-something-year-old Deputy Minister for Education pontifically chide the United States for "meddling in the sovereign affairs" of Ghana. Maybe somebody ought to remind Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa that it is rich and powerful countries like the United States that regularly supplement the income / budget of the Ghana government, thus making it possible for rambunctiously flamboyant junior cabinet operatives like him to splurge and obscenely display the sort of ill-gotten wealth into which he has recently been immersed.
It is also interesting to hear the man whose American-resident and schooling younger sister was recently indicted on charges of mail fraud and theft by an American court, and was generously afforded a punitive slap on the wrist, literally demand an arm and a leg, in the form of a Sisyphean apology from President Barack H. Obama, over a tweeter blunder allegedly committed by a staff member of the U.S. Embassy in Ghana (See "US Embassy Apology Not Enough - Okudzeto-Ablakwa" MyRadioGoldLive.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/20/14).
I also vehemently disagree with the young motor-mouth ministerial second-bananas that the significance and impact of the tweeter diplomatic blunder transcends the fast-freezing relationship between the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government and the United States' Embassy in Ghana. Truth be told: The good, hardworking and longsuffering people of Ghana have absolutely no part to play, one way or another, in this irrefutably silly and minor diplomatic flap. Neither have they mandated the Mahama government to casually and smugly conduct their affairs in cyberspace, let alone on the social network of tweeter, a bona fide American invention, of which only an insignificant few have ready and uninterrupted access.
There is also absolutely nothing, whatsoever, at stake for many an ordinary Ghana, contrary to what Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would have Ghanaians believe, other than the imperative need for the perennially bumbling government of whose junior cabinet membership he is integral to deliver up to par, as it were, and also to palpably demonstrate that he and his cronies deserve their fat-dripping salaries.
The young man with the canine incisors - apologies to Chairman Rawlings - also ought to be made aware of the fact that there are legions of non-citizen Ghanaians resident right here in the United States who have forged a quite legitimate avocation out of constant and persistent "meddling in the internal affairs of the United States," by writing and publishing reams of tirades against the policies of their faultingly magnanimous host nation on a daily basis.
In other words, this is the "Uni-Village" era of globalization, and snooty brats like Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa had better promptly come to terms with the same. And yes, he may be too young and academically woefully under-tutored for his own good. And so, perhaps, somebody more levelheaded and knowledgeable in postcolonial Ghanaian history and politics ought to inform this brash and abrasive young man that the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party (CPP) government that was auspiciously ousted on February 24, 1966 was no model democracy for either Ghanaians or continental Africans at large.
Rather, the tautologically named CPP was an extortionate faux-communist-oriented dictatorship with scarcely any redeeming features. And I feel implacably offended to hear cynical political upstarts like Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa imperiously attempt to lecture Ghanaians, and the rest of the world, on what heavenly society Ghanaians and Africans lost with the overthrow of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Indeed, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would do himself, and the rest of us, great good in finding out about just who cold-bloodedly assassinated Togo's President Sylvanus Olympio, for only one near-home example. Now, young man, let's talk about real "political meddling."
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