Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa
I find the rather jejune and infantile attempt by Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for North-Tongu Constituency, in the Volta Region, to constantly play former President John Agyekum-Kufuor against President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to be absurdly fascinating. Were the NDC’s Spokesman on Foreign Affairs an intelligent and mature opposition politician, Mr. Ablakwa would have long come to a practical understanding and appreciation of the fact that the two men are not clones or Xerox copies of one another, although both men belong to the same political party.
The North-Tongu NDC-MP also needs to realize the fact that President Akufo-Addo was voted into the seat of governance by the Ghanaian people to put bread-and-butter on our dining tables, as well as to ensure the well-being of our youths and future leaders, and not to blindly celebrate what the rabid Akufo-Addo critic and his associates deem to be the pan-Africanist legacy of the man who deliberately and systematically assassinated the current President’s own granduncle, namely, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah (See “AU Day: Akufo-Addo Pursuing Agenda to Diminish Nkrumah’s Legacy – Ablakwa” Ghanaweb.com 5/25/19). No such expectation could be more criminally preposterous.
What President Akufo-Addo and all progressive-minded Ghanaians and Africans are presently promoting are democratic ideals, such as individual and the collective freedom of speech and association rights of each and every bona fide Ghanaian and continental African citizen, as well as the fundamental human right to be promptly and fairly tried in a legitimately constituted court of law, when brought up on charges of treason or sedition, the sort of basic universally endorsed civil liberties and rights of citizens of any civilized modern nation and society which Nkrumah maliciously denied Dr. Danquah and, in fact, criminally and vindictively caused the Nsawam Prison Assassination of Nkrumah’s most hated former political benefactor and mentor.
It is also interesting that the loud-talking but facts-challenged Mr. Ablakwa would so cheaply attempt to play mischief with the intelligence and memory capacity of levelheaded democracy-loving Ghanaians and Africans. For example, President Akufo-Addo has not summarily proscribed or prohibited September 21, which has been celebrated for quite sometime now as the statutory or official birthday of Ghana’s first postcolonial leader. I believe this latter date has also been adopted by the African Union (AU) as its commemorative day, a holiday. Then also, Ghanaians celebrate March 6, every year, as the Independence Anniversary of our country’s reassertion of its prized Sovereignty from British colonial rule, although such celebration has unfairly and unwisely become another cynical excuse for fanatics like Mr. Ablakwa and most of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to celebrate Nkrumah’s birthday and political achievements, nose-thumbing fashion.
But, predictably, when August 4 was aptly voted upon in Parliament and selected to mark the foundation of Ghana’s first modern political party, namely, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), and as Founders’ Day, instead of Founder’s Day, the preferred megalomaniacal version of the Nkrumacrats, the same Mr. Ablakwa, who is now crying foul over what the Tongu native terms as the short-shrift treatment of the memory of President Nkrumah, vehemently opposed this most healthy attempt to restore Ghana to its true historical reality and dignity. You see, Dear Reader, nothing is more insulting and criminal than when double-salary scam-artists like Mr. Ablakwa and his National Democratic Congress’ associates, including Candidate John Dramani Mahama, the man who personally presided over and, in fact, supervised such at once scandalous and criminal extortion of the hardworking but woefully underpaid Ghanaian worker, resort to conveniently playing fast-and-loose with the reality of their political conduct and thievish robber-baron leadership.
Ablakwa has even vehemently opposed the renaming of the University of Ghana after the man who singularly most fiercely fought British colonial resistance to the establishment of the same, as well as singularly caused the glorious bestowal of the name “Ghana” in place of the erstwhile Gold Coast to be democratically put before the people in a referendum. It has been said time without number that those who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones. Mr. Ablakwa and his associate political goons of the National Democratic Congress had better listen up. This is not May 25, 1963, but May 25, 2019. What is more, even as WEB DuBois rightly observed, giving up some aspects of one’s personal and national identity for the sake of a potent/strong collective African identity is not a one-way street, as the likes of Mr. Ablakwa clearly seem to suppose and believe.
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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York