By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 29, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
Nana Akomea’s New Patriotic Party Communications Directorate must be better focused and thematically more poignant about what it puts into the public domain. I have a trusted point man presently visiting Ghana from the United States (he has since returned) who has been bitterly complaining that the problem of the Akufo-Addo Campaign Team has to do with effectively “framing the issues” which the flagbearer of the country’s main opposition party wants eligible and prospective voters to be fully aware of in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. In this particular instance, though, the spotlight is on President Mahama’s most recent tour of the so-called Three Northern Regions.
The other day, somebody from the Tamale municipality wrote to thank yours truly for making specific mention of the respective regions of the North, Upper-East and Upper-West, instead of resorting to the lazy journalist’s shorthand of the “three northern regions.” Such mischaracterization also has the tendency to stereotypically homogenize the people of the northerly regions of the country, all to the disadvantage of the opponents of President Mahama who, for the sake of political expediency, prefers to indiscriminately appropriate the aforesaid lazy journalist’s shorthand.
We know for a fact that the Northern Region, Upper-West and the Upper-East Region have more ethnic diversity than the rest of the country combined, notwithstanding the fact of that portion of the country’s also being relatively underpopulated. But I was far more concerned about what the NPP Communications Directorate chose to report about the contents of the press conference held by Mr. Freddie Blay, Acting National Chairman of the party, to frontally respond to some petty and snide remarks that Mr. Mahama has been propagating against the country’s most formidable opposition political organization. Mr. Blay is himself partly to blame for such fuzzy reportage as the one put out by the Akomea Group and captioned “Mahama Wouldn’t Be President If He Was In NPP – Freddie Blay” (Ghanaweb.com 11/19/15).
In this press release, the Acting NPP National Chairman was quoted to have said that “He [Mr. Mahama] became President because of the sad and arguably mysterious death of his boss, President John [Evans] Atta Mills.” Somebody from the NPP’s Communications Directorate, particularly Nana Akomea, ought to have called for Mr. Blay to further expatiate on what the owner-publisher of the Daily Guide newspaper meant with regard to the obviously loaded, or controversial, phraseology of President Mills’ having suffered an “arguably mysterious death.”
In other words, if, indeed, Mr. Blay strongly believes that the death of President Mills was tempered by or credibly entailed some level of foul play, then, by all means, Mr. Blay has to boldly and fearlessly either issue a press statement to this effect or better yet, hold a press conference and let his theories and / or opinions and suspicions be known by demanding an immediate enquiry into the matter. After all, he would be merely expressing the same opinions and misgivings as publicly expressed by Dr. Cadman Mills, the surviving twin brother of the late President, and the Ekumfi-Otuam head of the Mills clan. We are also well aware of the fact of the late President’s known only adult son and child having publicly let on similar misgivings.
Put another way, Mr. Blay needs to boldly take the battle to the deviously petulant President Mahama, instead of playing a gun-shy or reluctant and timid self-defender. The latter tack, or strategy, puts Mr. Blay and his party in a needlessly defensive and politically vulnerable position, which does not augur well for a party-in-waiting that is poised to fiercely wresting reins of governance from the grossly incompetent Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress. Merely wishing that Divine Providence, or God, blesses the soul of the late President is rather lame-brained and annoyingly silly.
Then also, the NPP Communications Directorate’s release had Chairman Blay bitterly complaining about President Mahama’s having dabbled in the rhetoric of ethnic chauvinism or tribalism, while on his most recent electioneering campaign tour of the so-called three northern regions. What were the exact words used by Mr. Mahama? It is egregiously unhelpful to facilely presume all Ghanaians to have heard the invidious and lurid language allegedly used by President Mahama during his most recent tour of the three aforesaid regions. Nana Akomea and his staff ought to learn to skillfully cut out and suavely repackage and poignantly disseminate the indisputably cheap and tawdry Mahama gimmickry/rhetoric for all Ghanaians to bear credible witness to the same. Merely whining about the President’s alleged use of divisive language on his electioneering campaign tours won’t cut it or get the desired message across to eligible and prospective and potential voters, vis-à-vis his notoriously shameless and pathological and crass exhibition of primitive tribalism.
And by the way, what I also wanted to call attention to earlier on is the incontrovertible historical fact that Accra, in addition to having been the nation’s capital since 1896 – Cape Coast having lost that pride of place the very year that my maternal grandfather, the Rev. T. H. Sintim, was born – was also the official capital of the Eastern Region until 1967 or thereabouts. Should Ghanaian journalists therefore resort to calling the Greater-Accra Region and the Eastern Region THE TWO EASTERN REGIONS?