By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 7, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
Mr. Musah Superior has already eloquently riposted the predictably petty-minded article by Mr. Frank Agyekum, the John Agyekum-Kufuor spokesman, and so I do not intend to belabor President Kufuor’s rather inexcusably scurrilous attempt to fault Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for Mr. Victor Owusu’s own epic political failure in 1979 (See “Musah Superior Blasts Frank Agyekum for Attacking Akufo-Addo” Daily Guide 10/30/15). I have been wondering why Mr. Agyekum glaringly failed to discuss the rather morally cowardly and undignified decision by Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman-Prempeh, II, my favorite Asantehene, to cave in to the extortionate and exploitative dictatorship of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP), when the Asantehene and Osagyefo Sir Nana Ofori-Atta, II, had both agreed, in principle, to stand up to President Nkrumah.
What I also want to point out to Mr. Agyekum, author of the anti-Akufo-Addo tirade titled “NPP Hits Self-Destruct Button,” is that in 1979, Dr. Hilla (Babini) Limann fairly and squarely defeated Mr. Victor Owusu, leader of the Popular-Front Party (PFP), in the presidential-election runoff. Mr. William Ofori-Atta, the presidential candidate of the United National Convention (UNC), had placed third and did not therefore qualify to participate in the presidential-election runoff which was run between 45-year-old Dr. Limann and the 59-year-old Mr. Owusu. The leader of the People’s National Party (PNP) soundly defeated his most formidable political opponent on the basis of stature, familial responsibility and academic and professional achievements. Mr. Ofori-Atta (aka Paa Willie) largely lost from the start on grounds of age, for when it came to personality and professional credentials, Mr. Owusu was absolutely no match for the Mfantsipim, Achimota and Oxbridge-educated Mr. Ofori-Atta. And it clearly appears that it was these sterling qualities of the man that prompted the yeomanly likes of Messrs. R. R. Amponsah, Akenten Appiah-Menka and A. A. Afrifa to “enstool” the Kyebi-Abomosu native as the United National Convention’s presidential candidate. And by the way, all these UNC stalwarts were of bona fide Asante royal descent.
What the preceding clearly implies is that were Mr. Agyekum that epistemically and intellectually honest, as he ought to be, the author of the anti-Akufo-Addo tirade would have at least devoted a paragraph of his quite remarkably long article – at least by Ghanaian standards – to discussing the merits and demerits of the landmark decision by these three national political giants and great Asante citizens to turn their backs on Mr. Kufuor’s political hero and icon. At any rate, is it I alone who has recognized the curious incapacity of Mr. Kufuor to respectfully enunciate the name and credentials of “Dr. J. B. Danquah”? You need to only peruse President Kufuor’s very badly written and edited speech marking Ghana’s 50th Independence Anniversary to confirm this utterly flabbergasting, albeit not the least bit surprising, observation for yourself.
What is quite obvious here, of course, is the fact that if Mr. Kufuor had his own way, the “Danquah” equation of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition would be expunged. Truth be told: Mr. Kufuor is a cunning Akyem-hating Asante supremacist! But even as I told another one of his kind the other day, Mr. Kufuor would have an extremely hard time proving himself to be more ethnically Asante than the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics. Indeed, until Mr. Superior auspiciously and authoritatively brought the same to my attention, I had not known that Akufo-Addo had neither trucked with the Paa Willie Ofori-Atta-led United National Convention nor the Victor Owusu-led Popular-Front Party. And yet, quite a slew of the Kufuor factionalists have written reams of scatology recklessly accusing Nana Akufo-Addo of having unconscionably played the proverbial ethno-familial card.
Somebody even had the chutzpah to recently claim that Nana Akufo-Addo had served his Uncle Paa Willie’s party as General-Secretary. Predictably, none of these Atwima Mafia capos and their surrogates have been honest enough to point to the fact that Dr. Jones Ofori-Atta had stood on the ticket of the Victor Owusu-led Popular-Front Party and resoundingly won one of the 43, or so, seats for the PFP in the Fanteakwa or Akyem-Begoro Constituency. Whither, NPP and Ghana?!