President John Mahama
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
An apparently northern-dominated political interest group within the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), calling itself the Social Democratic Forum (SDF), has caustically castigated Voltaic chiefs and some of their people, or subjects, for deliberately “trying to paint President Mahama black,” and incessantly “wailing and lamenting and complaining of ‘neglect’ and ‘underdevelopment’” (See “Mahama Group Blasts Volta Chiefs for Denigrating President’s Achievements” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/19/16).
The stark irony here, though, of course, is that Mr. John Dramani Mahama is, incontrovertibly, black. We, of course, fully appreciate the figurative use of the word “black.” We also partially know that the NDC’s Social Democratic Forum is northern-dominated because the spokespersons for the group are named as Messrs. Manan Mustapha and Alhassan Issahaku.
But even more pointedly beyond obvious stereotypes, these two spokespersons, so-called, single out the Volta chiefs and their people for special ethnocentric carping by attributing the purported disaffection of the Voltaics/Voltaians to the exit of former President Jerry John Rawlings from office, which Messrs.
Mustapha and Issahaku claim to have singularly created a kind of bitterness which can only be satisfied if all national development projects were abandoned in the other nine regions of the country and exclusively and massively focused on the Volta Region.
In quite a remarkable sense, therefore, even while I may not necessarily and generally agree with these two spokespersons of the Social Democratic Forum, nevertheless, we strikingly appear to all agree that the overwhelming majority of the National Democratic Congress’ supporters from the Volta Region, in particular residents of the Anlo-Ewe areas of the region, tend to almost invariably envisage the party widely believed to have been founded by one of their own kinsmen to be their uncontested property and ticket to their unfettered collective development and prosperity.
Consequently, with the exit of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and the logical diffusion of political perks and other privileges across the country, the hitherto preeminently favored Voltaics/Voltaians feel themselves to be practically dislocated and alienated from the august center of privilege and power and thus literally abandoned.
Well, on the face of matters, this perception may seem to possess a modicum of validity. But even as I had occasion to vehemently argue not too long ago, the effective exit of Chairman Rawlings (aka Togbui Avaklasu I) notwithstanding, the Mahama cabinet, just like the Atta-Mills cabinet before the latter, continues to be heavily dominated by Voltaics, particularly Ewes of Anlo descent.
And so the following pontifical declaration by the spokespersons of the so-called Social Democratic Forum of the National Democratic Congress cannot be aptly said to hold true for all residents and natives of the Volta Region, to wit: “…that it is [well-nigh] time that these [Voltaic/Voltaian] traditional rulers, and their subjects, learned a truth that they may find unpalatable; that the days of the NDC’s bestowing special favors to Voltarians [sic] are over.
No longer can the NDC be a party run by Voltarians [sic] for Voltarians [sic]. It [the NDC] must be[come] a party by ALL Ghanaians for ALL Ghanaians” (The use of capital letters appear in the original).
None of the preceding pontifical declarations are, of course, a novelty to the ears or the imagination of yours truly who, by the way, has been observing and insisting all along that, perhaps, the single most significant contribution by Chairman Rawlings and the rest of the National Democratic Congress’ robber-barons and their hoodlum pack to our national political culture, in both the Fourth Republic and the postcolonial era in general, is the deft refinement and/or sublimation of tribalism, or nepotistic ethnic chauvinism, into an enviable art of uncanny inimitability, even while the most incarnadine, or guilty, culprits self-righteously project the same on their most formidable political opponents.
As for Messrs. Mustapha and Issahaku’s claim about the existence of some 11 (eleven) Volta-descended Fifth Columnists or Quislings whom they maintain had deliberately failed to appear in the nation’s former colonial capital of Cape Coast, for President Mahama’s launching of the party’s manifesto, we have absolutely nothing to remark, except to casually observe that the virulent accusation that these “internal boat-rockers” have an immutable disaffection for Mr. Mahama that is solely predicated on the latter’s ethnicity may be unduly exaggerated.
The fact of the matter is that irrespective of regional provenance or ethnic origin, only a negligibly minuscule percentage of Ghanaians are known to be resoundingly agreed on the critical question of the purportedly remarkable administrative competence of the Gonja petty chieftain.
By the same token, it cannot be honestly and/or objectively gainsaid that when Togbui Afede, XIV, the Agbogbomefia of Asogli and President of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs, publicly decries the tagging of the Volta Region as the NDC’s electoral World Bank as patently derogatory, because such facile labeling both takes Voltaics for granted, as well as inexcusably insults their intelligence, Togbui Afede is dead-on-target.
What makes yours truly a bit wistful on the latter score, though, is the bewildering fact that it took so long for the Yale-educated Togbui Afede and his elders, advisors and associates, as well as subjects, to come to such a definitive and salutary realization.