By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Feb. 15, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
The name Ebo Barton-Oduro does not possess much respectability or integrity in present-day Ghanaian political circles. As a Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice, the two cabinet portfolios are one and the same, Mr. Barton-Oduro was widely alleged to have collusively played a major role in the infamous Woyome Scandal in which, one man, Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a purported front-row financier of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), was widely reported to have bilked the Ghanaian taxpayer the whopping sum of GHC 52 million. As of this writing, the Mahama government is still playing musical chairs with the convicted mega-thief/grand-larcenist over the return of the money to where it was stolen from, with the full-backing of key operatives of the erstwhile Mills-Mahama administration.
And in recent months, vehement calls have gone up for either the resignation or prompt removal of Mr. Barton-Oduro from his current post of First-Deputy Speaker of Ghana's Parliament. Some have even called for his summary expulsion from the august House of Representatives. Now, Mr. Barton-Oduro appears to be fighting back with venom and vengeance. He is threatening to sue some media houses and reporters for taking his words and messages out of context in a malicious and deliberate bid to blighting his public image and hard-earned reputation, or whatever may be left of the same, and creating disaffection among his constituents (See "Barton-Oduro to Sue Media Houses" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/15/15).
In the latest of such instances of deliberate distortion of his words and messages, Mr. Barton-Oduro claims that he never said anywhere and at any particular moment that the perennially disruptive supply of electricity in the country had no significant bearing on the output of factories and industries and businesses in general, and that all that savvy and serious entrepreneurs needed to do was to wisely reconfigure their work and production schedules.
So far, at least from the one report on the subject that I read on Ghanaweb.com prior to the composition of this article, Mr. Barton-Oduro is not telling his audience who the guilty reporters and media houses are; but even more significantly, the man is also not letting on precisely what he had said in connection with the general slump in the level of industrial production in the country, and how effectively this clearly formidable obstacle could be surmounted.
"I am taking this matter seriously and I will not let it go. In fact, I have decided to sue them," the former Attorney-General second-bananas was reported to have fumed. I only hope he does not come down with any stress-related health condition, assuming the obviously heavy-set Oguaa native does not already have one. At any rate, I am keeping my fingers crossed in expectation of further explanation from the young man...tongue-in-cheek, of course.
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