By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
He has spent most of his political career snarling and snapping at his ideological foes, both real and perceived. Maligning and vilifying his political opponents have become his trademark. And when it initially and shockingly surfaced that lurking deeply underneath his sanctimonious public mien/façade was the rancid carcass of a maggot-infested pachyderm, and that Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia was no forthright statesman at all but, at heart, an out-and-out corrupt-to-the-core smooth operator, the Seikwa, Brong-Ahafo, native preferred to take the cynical and marshy road of sneering finger-pointing.
He would even call the 17 New Patriotic Party (NPP) aspirants for the presidential candidacy of the “Elephant Party” in Election 2008 the “Seventeen Thieves,” and cavalierly dare of them to rake any muck that they presumed to have recovered on his trail up his cuff.
And the just before he launched his present anti-defamation lawsuit against Western Publications Limited, publishers of the hard-hitting Daily Guide, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia had impudently attempted to blackmail former President John Agyekum-Kufuor into perennial public silence with unsubstantiated claims of corruption, and abject deception, vis-à-vis investment funding for the Bui Dam Project. And so when, all of a sudden, General Mosquito comes buzzing with the lethal “anopheles” of a lawsuit accusing Gina Blay’s group of damaging his supposedly hard-earned reputation, it is not quite clear precisely what the chief scribe of the ruling National Democratic Congress means. Does he, for instance, mean that it is fair game for him to impugn the reputation and dignity of NPP operatives but, somehow, when it concerns his own individual reputation, then such game reeks of the outright mischievous or even the insufferably criminal?
If, indeed, he had been complicit in all that has been attributed to him, regarding his collaborative bilking of the Ghanaian taxpayer in his conflict-of-interest business dealings with the Bui Dam Authority, even as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, himself, sits on the Board of Directors of the Bui Dam Project, then we don’t see why this “human anopheles” thinks that any Ghanaian judge worth his/her professional designation would let the former elementary schoolteacher comfortably walk away with the humongous sum of ¢ 1 million (Ghanaian Cedis) in damages.
Indeed, about the only aspect of the lawsuit which may redound to his favor is that regarding his vehement denial of owning a mansion of exact same scale and description as the one that the “Mosquito,” himself, has publicly admitted to owning in the Oyarifa suburb of Accra, in the Daaban Panyin suburb of Kumasi. But even here must be significantly recalled that rather than come out to flatly and vehemently deny owning the Kumasi mansion, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, rather sophomorically and unwisely chose to riposte by boastfully dry-running his resume of the litany of political appointments held both in government and in the National Democratic Congress, as well as his parliamentary service and job as a stock broker, almost as if merely holding prominent and fairly decent jobs, in of itself, entitles one to build at least two mansions within the temporally fleeting space of two years.
On the latter score, also, we vividly remember Mr. Asiedu-Nketia riposting to the media that public and familial expectations, vis-à-vis his, admittedly, quite impressive vita, necessitated easy and comfortable ownership of the alleged mansions.
Needless to say, had he not so unwisely resorted to impulsively and unreflectively responding to the media and his critics and, instead, shrewdly chosen to be represented by a legal counsel, then, of course, General Mosquito could be plausibly and realistically staring at the suit-stipulated damages of at least ¢ 1 million (Ghanaian Cedis) or even more, were he to be also awarded punitive damages. In the final analysis, the odds-on favorite will entail the presiding judge admonishing both sides to be of good, emulative behavior and then declaring a draw game. And the latter, of course, will be based on the traditional “Test of Malice,” with General Mosquito’s own notoriously intemperate public pronouncements against his political opponents and posturing public nastiness serving as star-witnesses against the plaintiff.
Nonetheless, we believe that wishing this SOB good luck is quite in order, as he will definitely require articulated truckloads of good luck to come out on top.
*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. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author, most recently, of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]. ###