By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
On April 25, 2012, the Ewe Apologist newspaper published its own decidedly skewed interpretation of a jaded report which the editors of the paper claimed to have been composed by a Mr. David W. Throup of a Washington, DC-based think tank called the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Characteristically, the Ewe Apologist, which is also known as The True Statesman, rather hollowly, sought to portray the presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) as a threat to the development of Ghanaian democracy (See “Akufo Addo Is Threat To Peace And Stability In Ghana – US Think Tank” PeacefmOnline.com).
What makes the at once rather callow and shallow attempt by the editors of the Ewe Apologist to demonize Nana Akufo-Addo indescribably laughable is, obviously, the fact that while the NPP flagbearer for more than three decades fiercely fought against military dictatorship in Ghana, the editors of the Ewe Apologist and its sympathizers spent roughly the same amount of time propping up and entrenching the Rawlings and Tsikata-led junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). The PNDC would dastardly orchestrate the assassination of three Akan Supreme Court judges – namely, Justices Agyepong, Sarkodie and Koranteng-Addow – and Major Sam Acquah, a retired member of the Ghana Armed Forces.
And for nearly twenty years, the combined Ewe-chaperoned bloody governments of the PNDC and the so-called National Democratic Congress would, literally, force millions of Ghanaian citizens to lie on their backs, spread-eagle, missionary style, as Messrs. Rawlings and Tsikata savagely raped us without cease. Needless to say, it was in direct reference and answer to such wanton acts of brutality that Nana Akufo-Addo called on Ghanaians, at large, and his own partisans, in particular, to be prepared to wean the members, supporters and sympathizers of the so-called National Democratic Congress, of which the publishers of the Ewe Apologist are integral, of their pathological penchant for violence, and to mount an epic counter-offensive, or resistance, in order to permanently quench this ungodly act of criminality once and for all.
In essence, to meaningfully appreciate the “All-Die-Be-Die” credo of the New Patriotic Party, one first has to appreciate the bloody history of the Rawlings- and Mills-led National Democratic Congress. Similarly, when Nana Akufo-Addo reminded the Akan people of their glorious heritage and heroism, the NPP flagbearer was simply reminding his countrymen and women, and at the same time sternly warning the extra-judicial butchers of the Anlo Mafia that long and far gone are the days when Messrs. Rawlings and Kojo Tsikata could hawkishly swoop upon our kinsmen and women and summarily execute them in the specious name of “revolution,” without being called to account.
In sum, it was indisputably the barbarous attempt by the Rawlings-Tsikata slaughter-machine to ethnically cleanse the august Supreme Court of Ghana of its best and brightest Akan members, that forced the latter sub-nationality to vehemently assume control over our own destiny. This is an indispensable lesson that every Ghanaian of Akan descent, as well as all peace-loving citizens of the country, needs to teach his or her children.
Ordinarily, we would not be rejoining any report composed and published on either Ghanaian politics or leaders by a member, or members, of a non-Ghanaian think tank located offshore. The fact of the matter is that Ghanaians, like people of other nationalities, are the best judges and critics of our own leaders, especially the leaders whom we have personally elected and/or appointed to serve and represent our collective national interests and destiny. In sum, we chose to rejoin this characteristically scandalous purveyance of abject mendacity unconscionably unleashed by the editors, reporters and publishers of the Ewe Apologist newspaper because, as adumbrated in the caption of this article, the servile days of the “missionary position” have long receded into the slag heap of history.
*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 “Danquah v. Nkrumah: In the Words of Mahoney.” E-mail: [email protected].
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