By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
For one who callously described the now-President John Evans Atta-Mills as “damaged goods” in the lead-up to the latter’s largely pro-forma official congressional nomination as presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress for Election 2008, it is rather curious for Mr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah to have so vehemently lambasted the President’s all-too-welcome decision to relieve Mr. Sekou Nkrumah of his official duties as director of the Ghana National Youth Council. The last time that I volunteered for that sector of the Youth and Sports Ministry, which was nearly 30 years ago, the NYC was called the National Youth Organizing Commission (NYOC) and it was during the, retrospectively, regressive era of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).
Back then, I was with the Kumasi office and briefly served as “platoon leader” for a group that inspected chop bars (or local eateries) in order to ensure that the minimum standard of dietary and environmental hygiene were being strictly observed. I would also briefly direct traffic at the Kajetia Roundabout, in addition to regularly performing my patriotic poetry at Anokyekrom of the Ghana National Cultural Center.
I catalog all the foregoing because recently, quite a slew of readers have written to me demanding to know exactly what I have contributed to our national development for me to presume to authoritatively criticize the government as well as critically question certain unsavory aspects of our national and social life.
Anyway, precisely why Mr. Spio-Garbrah thinks that a “damaged good” like President Mills has absolutely no right to determine who serves under his administration and who gets the proverbial boot is not clear. What is clear, however, is that like the nauseatingly self-righteous Mr. Rawlings, the former Information minister seems clinically incapable of telling the truth about the rank corruption that characterized the entire 19-year tenure of Monsieur Rawlings and his so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC).
For starters, the critic conveniently fails to apprise his audience regarding precisely why President William Jefferson Clinton’s State Department sent him off from Washington, DC, as Ghana’s ambassador – and chief diplomat – to the United States of America. Instead, readers are fed such guff as the NDC under Mr. Rawlings’ tenure being so well-staffed with such sterling cabinet appointees as Mr. Spio-Garbrah himself that the STX Housing Scam that has so mortified Ghanaians the world over would not have occurred under the watch of Togbui Avaklasu I. “Listen” to the following vaunt, for example: “If you hear that STX has been withdrawn from parliament and you are in London or New York, you feel sad because the President knows that when some of us were in cabinet, many of such projects that had question marks against them were halted right in the cabinet itself; they didn’t go to parliament and the same proposal would be submitted over and over again by the respective minister until cabinet was satisfied that the document itself could stand the test of time [muster expert and erudite debate?] outside cabinet. But if for whatever reasons, some cabinet ministers are not bold enough to express their views or if they feel that if their views are contrary to [those of] others they may get terminated, then you may have these kinds of situations” (See “Spio Asks: Is Sekou the Most Incompetent Appointee of Mills?” MyJoyOnline.com 7/16/10).
First of all, does Mr. Spio-Garbrah facilely presume Ghanaians to be so morbidly afflicted with amnesia as to have so soon and readily forgotten about the infamous “slappocratic” culture doggedly pursued in the Rawlings cabinet? Or the critic, somehow, supposes the brutal beating to death of ex-Vice President Ekwow Nkensen Arkaah never really occurred? I am almost certain of President Mills listening to his sometime presidential rival mouth such cant and canard and chuckling and uncontrollably guffawing and snorting and growling about some disappointed and sore-losing political upstart presuming to second-guess his purely administrative decisions.
Then also, perhaps, Mr. Spio-Garbrah needs to be reminded that the Aveyime Rice Racket, a veritable national contretemps, occurred with the knowledge and complicity of a legion cabinet appointees “gloriously” chaperoned by, you guessed right, the now-President John Evans Atta-Mills! How about the Mabey and Johnson Scam in which prefabricated culverts and bridges paid for in advance by the struggling Ghanaian taxpayer were never delivered or installed? And the spillage of a rank culture of bribery and corruption suavely presided over by the Rawlings Gang revealed in the British investigation of the home-based supplier? How about SCANCEM and GHACEM which, when one seriously begins to analyze, actually accentuated the country’s phenomenal housing deficit.
What readers need to properly and squarely bear in mind is that his most recent tirade and effusions against both the person and administration of President Mills were merely the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s spine. Earlier, Mr. Sekou Nkrumah had vociferously called for a formidable challenger to take on his political benefactor in Election 2012, a call that dangerously verged on the legal crime of sedition.
As for the apparent incongruity between the dismissal of the younger Mr. Nkrumah and the circus-like celebration of his late father’s centenary birthday anniversary, as stridently decried by Mr. Spio-Garbrah, we can only riposte that the salad days of unreflective political sentimentality are way off yonder. I mean, just fathom President Nkrumah’s national coordinator of the Young Pioneers’ Movement (YPM) exhorting either Mr. Kojo Botsio or Mr. Komla Gbedemah to challenge the flamboyant and megalomaniacal African Show in the 1960 presidential election.
*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 21 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].
###