By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 23, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
Gradually, the earthquakening euphoria that greeted the arrest of Ms. Nayele Ametefe at London's Heathrow Airport is beginning to recede into oblivion. And as it does, the people's attention is, once again, beginning to be squarely focused on quality-of-life matters, in particular the exorbitant cost of living. Part of the rapid subsidence of Nayelegate has been due to the recent drug bust of several Ghanaian contraband couriers at the Kotoka International Airport since the November 10th Heathrow Cocaine Tsunami. And this is all well and good, as well as it ought to be.
What is curiously becoming a nasty streak or behavioral trait of the key operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, though, is the expectation of these wantonly corrupt and exploitative operatives that, somehow, the most economically deprived Ghanaians, especially those who do not subscribe to the populist and faux-socialist tenets of the NDC, adamantly refuse to shut up and pretend that everything is hunkydory. President Mahama claims that only "people suffering from 'selective myopia' would not see the good works of the NDC" (See "President Mahama's Comment On Greenstreet Reprehensible - Otiko" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/22/14).
Of course, I am intrigued by the very oxymoronic concept of "selective myopia" and have been wondering whether the obverse of "selective myopia" is obviously not "expansive" or "dilative" myopia. This is quite fascinating because just the other day, the butterball presidential staffer called Sam George Nettey was widely reported to have accused the General-Secretary of the rump-Convention People's Party (r-CPP), Mr. Ivor Greenstreet, of lacking the desired level of appreciation for the legion good deeds of the Mahama government because, being wheelchair-bound, Mr. Greenstreet lacked the stature and perspective to do the same.
Maybe the President needs to invite Mr. Greenstreet and the entire membership of the Federation of Disabled Ghanaians to take an aerial tour of the country in his presidential jet. I bet the marvelous landmarks they would be privileged to be exposed to would cause these wheelchair-bound brothers and sisters to create a personality cult around Little Dramani. Already, the Kufuor-initiated School-Feeding Program is widely known to have virtually collapsed; as well, "Dumsor" has become the country's third national anthem, after "God Bless Our Homeland" and Dr. Ephraim Amu's "Yen Ara Asase Ni." Ghana is also, today, the only oil-producing country in the world where the prices of automotive fuel have been inversely skyrocketting, even as the price of a barrel of Black Gold has plummeted precipitously.
And so, of course, it makes perfect sense that President Mahama would be obliquely and mischievously accusing the r-CPP's Mr. Greenstreet of "Selective Myopia." For me, though, such intemperate revolt against constructive criticism, on the part of the leaders of the NDC, harks back to the eerie and infamous "Culture-of-Silence" days of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings' Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, when this most basic form of human expression exacted the harshest forms of punishment, including death-by-happenstance. Dear Reader, you may recall the surgical roadkills of Anglican Archbishop Entsuah-Mensah, in the old Achimota Village; and also, the mysterious transfiguration of Pastor Amoako, the man whose yet-to-be-written and published biography I was the first to broach the desire of doing so.
Well, one cannot begrudge Ms. Otiko Afisa Djaba for daring to promptly and pointedly call her own maternal uncle a man woefully lacking in the democratic finery of "tolerance." Or has anybody my age so soon forgotten the meanspirited architect of "Shit-Bombing"? How about "Selective Amnesia"?
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