Otiko Afisa Djaba, MInister for Gender, Children and Social Protection
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
It was supposed to have been posted on the Facebook page of the male tattle-tale who wrote it. I have a Facebook account that I scarcely use, so I was highly unlikely to have come across, let alone read, the same. Not that it would have made any heck of a difference. I am, of course, talking about Ms. Otiko Afisa Djaba’s rejoinder to the Facebook guff allegedly authored by one Mahama Haruna titled “I Never Desired John Mahama as Husband” (Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/8/17). It is typical of a man who has been resoundingly knocked down and out cold by a woman remarkably more formidable than himself or his icon who has taken it upon himself to bat for either his master or benefactor, to pretend as if the to-do or fracas is about anything but what it obviously is about.
I often prefer to stay well on the ground and above the gutter, but sometimes one has to play gutter-to-gutter in order to elevate the subject of debate or argument to a much higher ground, not that there is any grist or room for debate and/or contest here, for there clearly is not. The suggestion here by Mr. Mahama Haruna is that Ms. Djaba has resorted to lobbing gratuitous jabs at her first cousin and former President John Dramani Mahama because of some sour grapes resulting from the latter’s flat refusal to be bonded in an arranged marriage to the substantive Minister of Children, Gender and Social Protection. But the gratuitous jabs being alleged here, for the most part, ended last December with the decisive and resounding defeat of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) by the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP).
In reality, it has been the 10, or so, NDC members on the NPP-dominated Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC) who clearly seem to have been disconsolately bitten by the stinging fangs of sour grapes, if one may aptly say so. We all witnessed this inexcusably embarrassing gang-up of the NDC-PAC members against Ms. Djaba. Now, it is darn illogical for any dude with a presence of mind to be desperately attempting to extort apologies from a woman who has been supposedly scorned, rejected or spurned, dear reader, kindly choose your pick. Ms. Djaba has categorically declared as follows: “He [former President John Mahama] is my brother. There will absolutely be no incest in this relationship.” She is the witness and/or participant to this fray whose narrative or event, ever so obliquely, sounds all the more credible. Very likely, it was the man being grotesquely shilled for by Mr. Mahama Haruna who was given the black-eye or decked to the floor.
Besides, Ms. Djaba appears to be quite attractive and intellectually spunky enough to hold her own against any Ghanaian woman of her age and class to worry about Cousin John’s conjugal affiliation with his now-wife, Lordina, irrespective of how “very beautiful, curvy [or] excellent backed” her derriere may look or even feel – my profuse apologies to both husband and wife. You see, the problem with Mr. Tattle-Tale Mahama Haruna is that like a typical male chauvinist, he cannot stand a well-educated woman with spunk. If, indeed, as Mr. Tattle-Tale claims, Ms. Afisa Otiko Djaba was deemed to be “too abrasive, arrogant and too known” for Cousin John, then, clearly, the issue at stake here, as I had already anticipated, had absolutely nothing, whatsoever, with the question of whether the Nkoranza belle was the prettier or more prepossessing of the two, or the Gonja-cum-Krobo beauty queen was the “It,” as New Yorkers are wont to say.
It is simply the stark and poignant fact that you can’t contradict the well-informed opinion of the even more romantically mercurial Mr. Henry Djaba’s daughter vis-à-vis the gross administrative incompetence of Cousin Mahama, without looking like a naked man doing the rounds in the Bole-Bamboi market square in broad daylight.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 11, 2017
E-mail: [email protected]
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs