By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 10, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]
Most days, I prefer to mind my own business; but when one of these Trokosi reprobates takes the battle to the courtyard of yours truly – or rather, I should say the courtyard of my customary grandfather (actually he is only one of my several customary grandfathers, the Asantehene being another) – then, of course, I am left with absolutely no choice but to shoo off this craven chicken trying to play a pesky gadfly. This is not the very first time that this Trokosi SOB has attempted to create mayhem and confusion in our courtyard. And so I am quite certain that he expected me to shortly appear in the portals of our palatial portico with my horsewhip and deliver his butts a couple of wallops.
I didn’t know that it was a crime for any major chief or traditional ruler in the country to exhort his people to help any elected leader of Ghana transform our nation into something much better than the apocalyptic socioeconomic, political and cultural mess in which most of us find ourselves presently. Which is why I find it rather flabbergasting that whenever a refreshingly forward-looking traditional ruler, particularly an objective and non-Trokosi one, takes this most healthy statesmanlike stance to national politics and governance, in general, the Trokosi Nationalist finds it nigh impossible to either accept or appreciate such an enlightened and progressive attitude towards the conscious shaping of our collective destiny.
Of course, I know where this Trokosi would-be-detractor of Ghana’s main opposition leader is coming from. The so-called World Bank of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). You see, the average Anlo-Ewe chieftain – there are quite a few exceptions, I suppose – is NPP-blind. One only has to take a cursory glance at the voting pattern in their briar patch of the country over the past two decades to fully appreciate what I am talking about. These red-socks and white-sneakers wearing chieftains simply lack “Vitamin Objectivity” or the requisite “Political Protein” to enable them make cross-partisan or non-partisan policy decisions and pronouncements.
The observant reader may have even noticed how these chiefs pounce on whoever happens to be the leader of an NDC government, and earnestly, fervidly and sometimes even aggressively demand what they deem to be their fair share of our proverbial national cake which, by the way, they have been widely known to have acquired more than nearly every one of the other ethnic polities in the country. Their threats are almost invariably leveraged around seasonal ballot rigging. We shall take up the foregoing matter as and when deemed appropriate throughout this electoral watershed year.
What engendered this sticky subject, by the way, was the all-too-expected appearance of the Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, at the 5th anniversary celebration of the installation of the Effiduasehene, of the New Juaben Traditional Area, Nana Okoawia Dwumoh Baabu IV, in Koforidua, the Eastern Regional Capital. Those of our readers who know the history between the people of Akyem-Abuakwa and the New-Juaben State pretty much know what I am alluding to.
At this fiesta, among other things, the Okyenhene, naturally, exhorted all Ghanaians thusly: “We must all support President Mahama’s quest of transforming Ghana from [it presently bleak state] into a better one” (See “Okyenhene: Let’s Support Mahama to Transform Ghana” JoyNews.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/8/16).
It is quite pathetically obvious that the Trokosi agitprop tout who farcically attempted to rope Akufo-Addo, the 2016 New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate, into the fray had hoped to gain some political capital by the mischievous suggestion that, somehow, in exhorting his countrymen and women to helping President Mahama transform the country for the better, the Okyenhene could be logically and aptly envisaged to have endorsed Nana Akufo-Addo’s main political opponent in the lead-up to Election 2016.
Actually, the Okyenhene may well have been ironically underscoring Mr. Mahama’s notorious diarrheal use of abusive language against hardworking and well-meaning traditional Ghanaian rulers and citizens, such as his infamous tagging of Kyebi, the Okyeman royal capital, as “the Galamsey Capital of Ghana.” But, of course, nobody expects a low-level and rabidly anti-Akan Trokosi Nationalist to remarkably appreciate the felicitous language of irony and humor.
Trust me, Trokosi Man, there is absolutely nothing to the Okyenhene’s call besides sheer patriotism and exemplary statesmanship. And even as most of our readers can clearly see, on the question of political objectivity and statesmanship, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin is absolutely without compeer in Anlo-Eweland.