By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 26, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
He is one of the most divisive members of the so-called National Democratic Congress’ Communications Team. He is not particularly smart or rhetorically as effective as a party propagandist ought to be. But one thing is certain: like the rest of his associates on the aforementioned team, Mr. Abraham Amaliba is too full of his own self-importance. I am, however, not on state side to be able to accurately judge what caliber of professionally trained lawyer he is. I also long ago stopped following his diarrheal media fare, let alone try to respond to any of his anti-New Patriotic Party tirades and lies. I have in the past, responded to a few of his virulent attacks against the leadership of the New Patriotic Party. He has this air of hollow self-righteousness about him, which recently made him feel superior enough to knowingly comment on the Anas Aremeyaw Anas-initiated investigative exposé on the judges and magistrates captured on videotape and alleged to have taken bribes from members of Mr. Anas’ Tiger-Eye PI network in order to dish out judicial travesty, largely in favor of hardened and dangerous criminal suspects who could, or were willing to, pay the asking price of these corrupt judges and magistrates.
When the Anas videotape exposé first hit the media spotlight, Mr. Amaliba was one of the very first activist lawyers, together with Dr. Raymond Atuguba, the recently resigned Mahama staffer, to take to the airwaves and strenuously attempt to take credit for what most ordinary Ghanaian citizens have always known, even if they could produce no forensically credible evidence to prove the same. The reality, though, was that neither had Messrs. Atuguba and Amaliba provided anything more than self-righteous anecdotal narratives to shore up what these two men, together with the late Mr. Larry Bimi, former Head of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), claimed to be solid and incontrovertible evidence pointing to the thoroughgoing corrupt culture of the country’s judicial system.
At one point when the judicial scandal broke, I had to indicate to them that by the very nature of their quite lucrative political involvement with the government of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, that these men had no more moral and personal integrity than the men and the handful of women judges and magistrates they were luridly pretending to feel superior to. Why professionally trained and fairly well-schooled Ghanaian citizens like Mr. Amaliba prefer to take the cheapest route to the fast buck, rather than diligently and honestly sweating it out, boggles my imagination. But it is also quite understandable to me, knowing the sort of generally lax attitude towards hard work by the proverbial Ghanaian personality. One labor expert, not very long ago, wrote a quite thought-provoking article in which he explained that such lassitude had no little part to do with the uncomfortably humid and sultry equatorial climatic conditions of the West African sub-region. The author therefore suggested that our civil service work schedule be reorganized to have most public employees work at night, when the temperature was reasonable cool.
But with Dumsor, or the erratic power supply having decidedly become a permanent feature of our national life and existence, it is anybody’s good guess how such a clearly innovative work schedule and/or labor regime could be successfully and effectively implemented. Listening to him rail and rant against New Patriotic Party leaders like Nana Akufo-Addo, Mr. Amaliba makes his audiences believe Ghanaians to be living in two wholly hermetically separate societies, namely, a heterogeneous southern Akan-dominated society, on the one hand, and a largely homogeneous northern society whose sole and foremost political Santa Claus is President John Dramani Mahama. Of course, I am thinking about GYEEDA, SUBAH and ASONGTABA and all the other economic policies initiated by the National Democratic Congress, which makes it seem as if all true Ghanaians were of northern descent. Or perhaps I ought to more aptly say “All first-class Ghanaian citizens are of northern descent.” Which is why it comes as quite a bit of a surprise to hear Mr. Amaliba bitterly gripe that his “friendly” opponent in last Saturday’s parliamentary primary in Bolgatanga Central, Mr. Isaac Adongo, viciously, and deviously, used the TRIBAL CARD to get him invidiously sidelined by voting party delegates.
Mr. Amaliba also claims, characteristically self-righteously, that he has done far more than Mr. Adongo to advance the cause and development of the people of Bolga-Central; and that the Bolga-Central constituents had, somehow, been ungratefully blinded by their ethnic affiliation with his opponent to reject his noble offer to represent them and their collective interests in our National Assembly. Now, these are the fighting words of a disappointed arrogant politician, if the dear reader were to ask yours truly.