By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Having been condignly dispossessed of his Legon graduate degree, for the quite serious academic infraction of plagiarism – and now in retrospect, it appears that he may as well have received a handsome consignment of the missing cocaine from Police Headquarters – the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Tamale South continues to be haunted by the demons of his woeful lack of credibility. And so it appears that in a pathetic bid to recouping some of his lost credibility, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu has resorted to the mischievous creation of a pretext for the incurably diffident and pathologically despondent NDC to wreak mayhem in the certain event of the Rawlings Corporation (R. C. Unlimited) massively losing Election 2008 and disintegrating shortly thereafter.
In his latest attempt at mischief, Mr. Iddrisu, who is also the Youth Organizer for his party, claims to be in possession of “credible information [evidence?] that the New Patriotic Party held a meeting on 8th July with some of its activists and other persons from the Information Services Department[,] at which meeting they [i.e. the NPP stalwarts] hatched a number of plans… to influence the electoral process in favor of the NPP.” According to Mr. Iddrisu, movers and shakers among the Kukrudites are intent on disenfranchising “people in NDC strongholds by collecting their voter ID’s in order to disrupt the electoral process” (Modernghana.com 7/31/08).
First of all, the flat refusal of the Tamale-South MP to promptly report the matter to the Police, as well as other national security agencies, immediately raises a red flag over the credibility of this certified plagiarist and liar. For instance, asked by Joy-Fm newscaster Mr. Seth Kwame Boateng why the Tamale NDC-MP had not promptly contacted the police, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu reportedly riposted that putting his purported evidence of an NPP scheme to rig Election 2008 in the public domain was enough of a deterrent. Wow! With this kind of infantile logic, nobody should be surprised if one of these days, Mr. Iddrisu also has his bachelor’s degree summarily withdrawn by the Chancellor and Academic Standards Committee of whatever college or university that awarded him the same.
Needless to say, his kind of logic and civic responsibility is the last thing that any intellectually sound Ghanaian ought to expect from any member of our august National Assembly. I am not even sure that any person with such borderline mentality, as the Tamale-South NDC-MP, would even be hired as a pre-kindergarten teacher.
And if he happens not to know, then it bears reminding the NDC Youth Organizer that his abject refusal to promptly report to law-enforcement agents, his purportedly “credible evidence” of an NPP plan to undermine Fourth-Republican Ghanaian democracy, in of itself, is tantamount to criminal complicity. And on this score, we unreservedly and forthwith call on the Speaker of Ghana’s parliament, Mr. Sakyi-Hughes, to invite the Tamale-South NDC-MP before a plenary session of our august House of Representatives in order for Mr. Haruna Iddrisu to promptly present whatever “credible information” that he has, regarding his allegation of the ruling New Patriotic Party’s attempt to rigging Election 2008, or be summarily expelled from Parliament House.
And here, also, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu ought to be told, in no uncertain terms, that his brand of infantile prank, or mischief, as well as any other potentially volatile political mischief, for that matter, has absolutely no place in the Ghana National Assembly. It may well be that the decision by the NDC constabulary to appoint Mr. Iddrisu as the party’s National Youth Organizer, has quite a lot to do with Mr. Iddrisu’s infantile temperament.
Conversely, it is the bounden duty of the executive membership of the ruling NPP to subpoena the NDC Youth Organizer before a legitimately constituted court of law in order to give Mr. Iddrisu ample opportunity to acquit himself or be promptly charged with a malicious attempt to disturbing the public peace, as well as inciting prejudice against the ruling New Patriotic Party.
In view of the foregoing, we do not wholly agree with the NPP National Organizer, Lord Commey, that Mr. Iddrisu’s patently malicious allegations “do not deserve to be reacted to” (Modernghana.com 7/31/08). No propaganda strategy could be more wrongheaded and/or ill-advised. For what the NPP National Organizer needs to be taught, for both the personal benefit of Lord Commey, himself, the NPP, in particular, and the nation, at large, is the fact of the NDC having been founded on the criminal philosophy of making up vicious lies about the party’s sworn enemies and opponents, and incessantly repeating such lies until failure to respond to them canonizes such lies into unalloyed, or gospel, truths. In sum, the politically potent strategy of promptly responding to pathological NDC fabrications has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with “dignity” but everything to do with guaranteeing the NPP’s bounden duty to ensuring that Ghana’s fledgling, albeit vibrant, democracy is not callously railroaded by the NDC posse of certified assassins and “stomach politicians.” For it goes without saying that the cultural abstraction of “dignity” is the last terminology that the servile members of the Rawlings Corporation (a.k.a. R. C. Unlimited) would desire to incorporate into their expedient and opportunistic vocabulary arsenal.
What we know, for a fact, is that on July 8, 2008, the ruling NPP held a pro-forma confab aimed at preparing its members and major operatives for the impending opening of the national voters’ register. A jittery Mr. Haruna Iddrisu appears to have attempted to play the wistful role of a “Buttinsky,” a wistful and keenly interested outsider, in which case Mr. Haruna Iddrisu may simply be signaling his avid desire to defecting from the opposition NDC and being cordially invited into the fold of the ruling New Patriotic Party. If so, then Mr. Haruna Iddrisu had better find a more ingenious, polished and legitimate means of achieving his aim.
*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, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” and “The New Scapegoats” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].