By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Long before Mr. Pianim outed himself and former President Kufuor as bona fide players in the swashbuckling and extortionate pay of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), I had suggested the fact of not being the least bit surprised were I to shortly learn of Mr. Kufuor having heartily voted for then-Candidate Atta-Mills in both rounds of the 2008 presidential election. Now that the proverbial dust seems to have settled and the grim reality of now-President Mills’ gross managerial incompetence has saw-dusted our mouths, as it were, the Essienimpong native and unabashed ethnic nationalist has begun singing what may aptly be termed as his “confessional” overtures.
In his latest melody, the convicted civilian coup-plotter claims that while, indeed, both Messrs. Pianim and Kufuor are NDC apparatchiks at heart, the latter is more of an Air-Vice Marshall to Mr. Rawlings’ Supreme Lord of the Skies, whatever that means. And Mr. Pianim ought to know what he is talking about; for in spite of his criminal conviction, Mr. Kufuor appointed Mr. Pianim as his chief authority on public utility regulation and pricing shortly after assuming the presidency. Both men have also been observed to be near Xerox copies of each other in more than several respects.
Academic-wise, both Messrs. Kwame Pianim and John Agyekum-Kufuor are among the best educated Ghanaians of our time. Mr. Pianim, as I recently learned, has a Master’s degree in Economic from Yale University and is contemporaries with Dr. Jones Ofori-Atta; Mr. Kufuor’s undergraduate Oxford degree, automatically elevated to the Master’s level as a matter of longstanding tradition, is, perhaps, the better known for obvious reasons. Both men, bona fide and thoroughbred Asantes, are also known to have schooled at the flagship secondary institution of Prempeh College.
I have decided to highlight ethnicity because in a recent interview that Mr. Pianim reportedly granted the magazine Africawatch, the renowned investment banker and industrialist cautioned against any ill-advised attempt by delegates of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to elect another Asante as its flagbearer for Election 2012 (See “NPP Should Not Elect An Asante – Pianim” PeaceFmOnline.com 6/17/10). To evidently clinch the wisdom of his admonishment, the Essienimpong (Ejisu-Juaben) native opines: “I did not support Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 primaries. I supported Yaw Osafo Maafo whom I considered to be the most competent of the ministers who served under President Kufuor.”
Such bias in favor of Mr. Maafo may obviously have something to do with the fact of the latter being also a renowned and highly respected economist. It does not, however, explain (at least not on the part of Mr. Pianim) why President Kufuor would abruptly and almost summarily dismiss Mr. Osafo Maafo, an Akyem of Kotoku lineage, from his cabinet and surround himself with a phalange of far less competent cabinet members, including Dr. Richard Anane, a former Health minister and later minister for Road Transport, even after the Kumasi-Nhyiaeso member of the Ghanaian parliament had been brought up on forensically culpable charges of misappropriating the public dole, a crime apparently engendered in unsavory support of Dr. Anane’s allegedly bigamous lifestyle. And here also must be significantly observed that Dr. Anane is also of bona fide Asante stock.
Anyway, as to why although he had (at least publicly) rallied behind Nana Akufo-Addo when the latter was elected flagbearer at the 2007 NPP delegates’ congress but still, as before, Mr. Pianim adamantly refuses to back the 2008 NPP presidential candidate for the second time around, this is what the man that Mr. Jeremiah John Rawlings once kept in the slammer for subversive activities had to say: “I am not supporting Nana Akufo-Addo for the same reasons that I did not support him in the 2007 primaries. I think the style of politics has changed in Ghana. The Adu Boahen and Rawlings’ aggressive and pugilistic approach and posture are over. When the Ghanaian electorate elected President John Kufuor and followed it up with the election of President Atta-Mills, they were [sic] telling us that they wanted a new type of politician, quiet of demeanor. Ghanaians seem to want leaders who exude and portray humility to occupy the high offices of state.”
Like most critics of his ilk, Mr. Pianim fails to explain to his audience precisely what Ghanaian voters equate with “humility” in the immitigably abrasive and notorious demeanor of Mr. Rawlings for the latter to be elected twice as president, after having dominated Ghanaian politics for eleven brutal years, during which period Supreme Court judges were deliberately abducted by cabinet members of the PNDC government and summarily executed, Mafia style, for crimes that have yet to be explained to both Ghanaian citizens and the civilized world at large.
We must also hasten and make bold to observe that both Messrs. Adu Boahen and Akufo-Addo are routinely and derisively tagged by “Kufuorians” and “Pianimites” as bona fide Akyem natives of failed presidential ambitions. In recent years, even some who claim to be scions/adherents of his ideological camp have sneeringly added the immortalized Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics to the pack. In Mr. Pianim’s rather callow and facile disquisition, one smells the same species of rodent.
But even before we venture any further, it bears observing emphatically here that while, indeed, the late Prof. Adu Amankwaa Boahen was of Akyem-Abuakwa patrilineage, nonetheless, as a bona fide heir to the Juaben (Dwaben) royal throne, the quite inimitable firebrand politician and astute and authoritative scholar of African history was also no less of an Asante patrician than either Mr. Kufuor or Mr. Pianim, among a host of other tunnel-visioned Asante nationalists!.
Anyway, what was even more fascinating about the Pianim-Africawatch magazine interview was the reason that the man proffered for categorically refusing to endorse the presidential candidacy of Kumasi-Subin MP and former Ghanaian high commissioner (ambassador) to Britain. Take a listen: “In spite of his being an Inkumsah [Asante?], his matrilineal line is from Ahanta in the Western Region. Yet, he [Mr. Isaac Osei] opted to be[come] an MP from Asante. I would have preferred that he should [would?] become an MP from Ahanta, so that we could have fielded him as an NPP presidential candidate from the Western Region…. When he opted to become an Asante MP, it became a little problematic for me.”
And, dear reader, you thought Mr. Kwame Pianim was a man ideally poised to teaching Nana Akufo-Addo a lesson or two about “Kufuorian” (canine) humility? Actually, what the Essienimpong native is boorishly telling his audience here is that since Akans trace our heritage from our mothers’ lineage, Mr. Osei has absolutely no right, whatsoever, to “falsely pose” as a bona fide Asante politician. As an intransigent jingoist, this is exactly where Mr. Pianim’s “problem” with Mr. Osei arises!
It is also interesting to note that Mr. Pianim seems to firmly believe that outside of “his” Asante Region, it is the Western Region that seems capable of producing the sort of “listening and decisive president” that Ghana needs. Well, the man that Mr. Pianim has decided to throw his leaden weight and wherewithal behind is stentorian cardiologist Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng. The “problem” for Mr. Pianim here, though, is that the last time that I heard about the former Korle-Bu “wiz-kid” in the news, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng was bragging about his deep ancestral roots in Atwima-Nwabiagya, the very same district that produced former President Kufuor, and particularly how the Pianim-candidate’s father introduced his future cardiologist son into the Danquah-Busia ideological camp.
In the case of former President Kufuor – the so-called Gentle Giant – we have the wild-goose candidacy of Mr. Alan Kyerematen being deviously and infelicitously pushed on members and supporters of the New Patriotic Party. The problem here is that other than his capital-intensive losing campaign for the NPP presidential nomination, Mr. Kyerematen has absolutely no experience in democratic culture, having been handpicked by Mr. Kufuor to serve as his uncle’s Trade minister. The irony here is that even as he vigorously and, in hindsight, mischievously pushed the candidacy of his ward, against the more obvious and logical choice of then-Vice President Aliu Mahama, over the mercurial ventriloquist, Mr. Kufuor kept warning party upstarts against the disruptive tendency of attempting to skip the queue. The latter, of course, was a figurative reference to hard work and seniority as salient marks of the ideal prospective NPP presidential candidate. And here, too, as we noted elsewhere and earlier on, Mr. Kyerematen is a bona fide Asante of Ejisu royal matrilineage.
Well, maybe Mr. Pianim ought to be regaled with Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyir Aggrey’s “Three-Finger (Akan) Philosophy.” You see, anytime that one imperiously points an accusing forefinger at an opponent/foe, see how the rest of the accuser’s own three fingers bunch up against him/her?
*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 21 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].
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