By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
The “Trokosi Boys” abortively came after the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, just about the same time that they mordantly lit into then-Attorney-General Martin Amidu and, once again, attempted abortively to get the Government’s chief lawyer to resign so that they could shamelessly and comfortably cross the Frau River with Mr. Alfred “Gorgormi” Woyome to divvy up our country’s stolen wealth. Fat chance, boys! (We shall, of course, take up the Amidu-Trokosi Boys fracas in due course).
Anyway, when that Amenyo bastard, or whatever he calls himself, started that rug called The True Statesman, I rightly predicted that the sole objective of the publishers was to provoke the main political opponents of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). One did not need any advanced academic credentials to figure this out; the Trokosi Boys have a long history, dating back to the 1950s, of roiling up provocation, in the absence of getting anything better to do among themselves and with one another. Not that they have ever had anything to do with themselves and their lives, short of grating raw cassava and gritting their Agbeli-Kaklo-discolored teeth.
That was generally their modus operandi until Togbe Avaklasu, the Sogakope Jeremiah, appeared on the scene, chopped off the necks of several of our high court judges and got the Trokosi Boys pinch-hitting as envy-wracked, ethnic-baiting scam-artists. Some have even claimed that the Sogakope Jeremiah, it was, who taught the Trokosi Boys how to offensively convert their perennial and pathological siege mentality into gold dust. The rest, as they say, is “Woyome.”
Anyway, does it really make sense to any levelheaded and well-meaning Ghanaian that a party on the cusp of a massive electoral victory, such as the New Patriotic Party (NPP), would actually dispatch secret agents to la Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso in order to invite mercenaries into the country with whom to strategize and create mayhem during the three major phases of Election 2012, so as to rather unimaginatively enable the power-hungry and kleptocratic Mills-led government to declare a state of emergency, and thus extend its chaotic rule of rank corruption in perpetuity?
Maybe a high-end nutritionist ought to advise the Trokosi Boys to wash down their Agbeli Kaklo (cassava donuts) with either a calabash full of cow milk or hot chocolate. For, needless to say, it is all too obvious that the Trokosi Boys are suffering from an acute case of “brainosomiasis,” a potentially fatal cognitive deficiency that causes them to hallucinate and/or dream up extremely illogical things. At this juncture, let me take this brief chance and moment to congratulate Akufo-Addo campaign press secretary Mr. Herbert Krapa, for promptly riposting the dastardly and devious attempt by the Trokosi Boys to railroad the dreams of democracy-loving Ghanaians. You see, the Trokosi Boys have always known that short of either shooting their bloody way into the old slave castle at Osu or Flagstaff House, the only practical alternative left to them is to piggyback on Tarkwa-Atta as a veritable Quisling or Fifth Columnist. Else, the only other way to do so is exactly what the Trokosi Boys have done by way of concocting their so-called True Statesman media fraud. Needless to say, it is in their very makeup or blood, if you please.
Alas, whenever I call them by their real, scientific name of “Virus,” the Trokosi Boys charge furiously at me, almost as if I have raped their mothers or their wives, or even their sisters and daughters!
Anyway, what I also wanted to tell you, my “brother” Krapa, is that next time, frontally take on the Trokosi Boys on the basis of sheer logic, rather than unsavorily and defensively detailing Nana Akufo-Addo’s predictably hectic itinerary, in order to shove off these ragamuffin political pests. You see, the name of their game is to perpetually put their most formidable ideological opponents on the defensive, in order to tire them out and/or run them out of breath and steam. By so doing, the Trokosi Boys hope to both bore and tire you to the morbid extent that you simply shrug your shoulders and give them precisely what they crave – a pass. You see, my brother, one open secret about the Trokosi Boys is that they never took any worthwhile lessons in either basic logic or critical thinking while in school, which is why they keep fabricating the kind of cock-and-bull stories that even my six-year-old and namesake would simply laugh off and go straight on playing his Nintendo Game Boy. These days, though, it is an MP-3. I also hear him talk the language of I-Pods and I-Pads.
Anyway, Mr. Krapa, I put the word “brother” in quotation marks because not very long ago, I royally goofed in calling another Ghanaian journalist whom my late father thought and firmly believed was his cousin “Uncle.” I must just as well have been run over by a garbage truck. Not only did Uncle Whatchamacallit rudely impugn the mental faculties of my late father, the codger also called my mother a whore. I, therefore, hope that I have not offended you too extremely in presuming to envisage you as my “brother,” at least my brother in the democratic struggle.
*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 Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected]. ###