By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
During the past three-and-half years that the incessantly besieged Mills-Mahama rag-tag team of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) ruled the roost, the London-based former ambassador to the United States was to be heard preening himself and calling the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills an irreparably damaged political good of a leader who could never be expected to improve upon former President John Agyekum-Kufuor’s remarkable development of the country’s economy.
And when he was not disdainfully cursing out the Mills-Mahama cabinet, as being thoroughly riddled with Team-B and C players (himself, of course, being located smack-dab among the vanguard ranks of Team-A players), the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization chief executive was surreptitiously and deviously in cahoots with the Satanic Couple, haranguing and harassing President Mills in hopes of having the latter strategically edged out of office, while Mr. Spio-Garbrah resigned his otherwise plum London post to replace my good, old Uncle Tarkwa-Atta.
And so it was quite amusing when, almost as if out of nowhere, Mr. Spio-Garbrah recently descended on Kumasi, the Asante Regional Capital, from his comfortable hideout and started shamelessly crooning about how the overwhelming endorsement of Transitional-President John “Paradigm-Shift” Dramani Mahama, at the NDC’s special delegates’ congress as the party’s unopposed presidential candidate for Election 2012, signaled the auspicious propping up of the NDC “on a higher pedestal” to winning this year’s general election (See “Dr. Spio-Garbrah Confident of NDC’s Victory” gbcghana.com/Ghanaweb.com 9/3/12).
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it should be revealed, in the foreseeable future that, indeed, Speedo-Spio had parachuted himself into Oseikrom with the not-so-godly intention of having Bole-Bamboi’s own Dramani deftly eased out of the way, in order for “Manifest Destiny” to work miracles on the perennially off-side presidential candidacy of Speedo-Spio. Alas, this was not to be! Which is not to either say or imply that Speedo-Spio had any shot at Jubilee House/Flagstaff House at all. Not by any stretch of even the most poetic and/or colorful of imaginations, were the dear reader to ask me.
One thing, though, is indubitably certain; and it is the fact that Joe Speedo may desperately be angling for a vantage spot on the right side of the Bole-Bamboi-born Messiah-of-Kotokuraba-Market fame. Still, one is at a total loss as to why Speedo had to drag the presence of Togbui Avaklasu into his suit, knowing fairly well that the Test-Tube Son of Northern Fantes is highly unlikely to have so soon forgotten, let alone forgiven, the unremitting and deftly coordinated vitriol which, according to my good, old Uncle Tarkwa-Atta’s own Amen-Corner supplicants, delivered the deepest cut into the heart of the soul of the Asomdwoehene.
On the rather comical question of the supposedly “overwhelming endorsement” of Transitional-President Mahama being portentous of an Election 2012 victory, one can only say that we are far well beyond post-Nkrumah Ghana – which simply means that ours is no Houphouette-Boigny’s Côte d’Ivoire, Gnassingbe-Eyadema’s Togo, Omar Bongo’s Gabon or even Teodoro Obiang’s Guinea, the one by the Equator, of course. I mean, preaching exclusively to the choir is not exactly President Kufuor’s idea of a High Catholic Mass. And neither is it mine nor that of the overwhelming majority of democracy-loving Ghanaians.
*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 “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: [email protected]. ###