By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In an article that I wrote and published on November 2, 2010, titled “Rawlings Begs to Vehemently Differ with Obed Asamoah” (See Ghanaweb.com ), I accurately predicted that Dr. Yao Obed Asamoah’s rather curious and mischievous attempt to pit former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings against President John Evans Atta-Mills in the heated lead-up to the 2011 National Democratic Congress’ presidential primary, was just a thinly veiled overture by the former chairman of the NDC aimed at deftly preparing the way for the re-entry of both Dr. Asamoah and his so-called Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) back into the fold of the ruling National Democratic Congress.
My prediction back then, was largely based on the eager acceptance of a plum petro-chemical post from President Mills by Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, Ghana’s longest-serving Finance and Economic Planning minister and “midwife” of the infamous Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), and the man who had vigorously challenged President Mills for the party’s nomination.
Significantly, I also alluded to the fact that in deviously claiming that Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings had contributed far more to the development of the National Democratic Congress than the man whom the former first lady’s own husband had handpicked and staunchly supported for three consecutive electoral campaigns over the course of an eight-year period, Ghana’s longest serving Foreign Minister, as well as Attorney-General, may well have eloquently, boldly and publicly articulated the sentiments of Dr. Botchwey.
Furthermore, I highlighted the fact that a fast-aging Dr. Asamoah, coupled with the ravishing reality of the financial bonanza that the country had struck with the discovery of vast reserves of the proverbial “black gold,” and the grim fact that the DFP seemed to have definitively hit a cul-de-sac, meant, perforce, that the former Legon Law School lecturer and mentor of President Mills had no other recourse but to return into the fold of the ruling National Democratic Congress, if Dr. Asamoah was to make himself “deservedly” rich and historically and politically relevant.
The preceding notwithstanding, and but for the fact that politics has been perennially known to make strange bedfellows, there is almost absolutely no palpable reason for any avid student of contemporary Ghanaian politics to have anticipated that the founding-chairman of the decidedly vegetable DFP would have made an about face barely twenty-four hours after the massive trouncing and humiliating defeat of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings in the latest NDC presidential primary, by rather sheepishly deciding to join forces with the very Santa Clausian-nosed Tarkwa-Atta that Dr. Asamoah so vigorously campaigned against in the heated run-up to Election 2008.
We must also vividly recall the fact that Dr. Obed Asamoah had momentarily flirted with the now-opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) – I hope he was never let into the cockles of the strategic sanctum of Ghana’s most democratic political organization – and even caustically described the then-opposition National Democratic Congress as the most corrupt, dangerous and violent political juggernaut to emerge on Ghana’s postcolonial landscape.
In sum, the question of whether Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah’s patently expedient decision to rejoin the ruling National Democratic Congress has any remarkable relevance beyond the purely cynical and personal remains to be seen.
*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 author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].
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