By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 18, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
Somebody had better remind Mr. Paul Afoko that he has a far better chance of causing the resurrection of Messrs. Adams Mahama and Abubakar Saddiq than being returned to his former post as National Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “I Sense NPP Losing 2016 If I Am Not Chairman – Paul Afoko” MyJoyOnline.com 11/18/15). Both slain men, as we all know, were staunch loyalists of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the 2016 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, who were brutally assassinated by elements loyal to the Kufuor-Kyerematen factionalists. And at least in the case of Mr. Adams Mahama, then-Upper-East Regional Chairman of the NPP, glaring circumstantial evidence points to the direct involvement of Mr. Afoko whose younger brother, Gregory Afoko, is presently in police and judicial custody awaiting trial as the prime suspect in the acid-dousing murder of Mr. Mahama, who was widely known to be the indefinitely suspended NPP National Chairman’s arch-nemesis.
What is most significant, once again, to highlight is the fact that in the immediate wake of Mr. Mahama’s assassination, Elder Brother Paul mischievously and criminally attempted to cook up an alibi for his brother Gregory, a notorious hardened criminal with a conviction record who was widely known to have served a prison term. Mr. Afoko claims that his indefinite suspension as party chairman bodes ill for the party but, in fact, it was his continued presence at party headquarters as NPP National Chairman that decidedly bode ill for the party’s chances at the 2016 general election. From the moment that the Bolgatanga native and his lock-step right-hand man and NPP General-Secretary Kwabena Agyei Agyepong set foot at the party’s Asylum Down national headquarters, the two men made no secret of their pet aversion for the good fortune of Nana Akufo-Addo. They would display in full press/media and public view the identity of the presidential candidate they intended to vote for and were cocksure would carry the endorsement of the party’s nomination for the 2016 presidential election. And that personality, of course, was not Nana Akufo-Addo. And so it is rather risible and asinine for Mr. Afoko to think that he can pull a fast one over the heads of both party faithful and sympathizers of the New Patriotic Party.
We must also quickly point out that immediately prior to his indefinite suspension by the NPP’s National Executive Committee (NEC), a move that has since been resoundingly affirmed by the party’s National Council (NC), the party’s elected Members in Parliament (MPs) had effectively cut off their regular financial contributions to the administration of the party. At the time, Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, the NPP’s Parliamentary Minority Leader (and my PERSCO senior, by the way), publicly noted, plaintively, that under Mr. Afoko’s stewardship, virtually every productive activity at party headquarters had ground to a standstill. Mr. Mensah-Bonsu had also indicated that Chairman Afoko and his staff at party headquarters had contributed absolutely nothing to their reelection campaigns. What this clearly means is that Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong had been hell-bent on ensuring that Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia’s third shot at the presidency would be effectively scuttled, in order to pre-meditatively make way for the pet candidate of the so-called Agenda 2020 factionalists.
And this is precisely why those who have publicly carped Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong for being National Democratic Congress moles, generously paid and planted at party headquarters to do electoral magic for President John Dramani Mahama and his Flagstaff House associates and cronies, may not be wide off the mark. Playing the predictable cheap and tawdry “Volta Card” will also not work in favor of Mr. Afoko who made his pet aversion for Mr. Perry Okudzeto, a Volta-descended Deputy NPP Communications Director and an Akufo-Addo loyalist, loud and clear when he summarily fired Mr. Okudzeto against long-established protocol. Now, Mr. Afoko would have the world believe that the NPP’s movers-and-shakers are dead-set against the party’s chances at an Election 2016 victory, merely because an NPP Constituency Organizer, who also doubles as a District Assemblyman, has been lawfully suspended for exhibition of gross indiscipline. I bet Mr. Afoko is not far from being clinically retarded.