By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I am no detractor of President John Dramani Mahama's, but I am one of the most patriotic Ghanaians and proud Africans that you would not catch off-guard sychophantically congratulating Mr. Mahama for being elected Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). That kind of cheap and tawdry gimmickry must be left to propaganda junkies like the Kuku Hill Campaign Center of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) - (See "ECOWAS Needs Mahama's Incorruptible Leadership - NDC" MyJoyOnline.com 3/31/14).
First of all, I don't think being elected ECOWAS Chairman for the fleeting tenure of one year is any much of a big deal. And it is a wonder that the chairmanship, or chairship, of ECOWAS continues to be one year. After all, what kind of sustainable progress can any leader achieve in one year over such a vast geographical spread as the West African sub-region? This is what those fervidly pushing for African geopolitical unification ought to be thinking about, and not merely who gets to occupy this largely ceremonial office at any particular moment in time.
After all, haven't even pathologically visionless former military dictators like Messrs. Jerry John Rawlings and Blaise Campaore, among a legion of others, held ECOWAS chairmanships at one time or another? And just what does this tell us about ourselves as a people purportedly poised towards the imminent establishment of a democratic and united Africa? Could we be any more serious than a bunch of moral, emotional and intellectual toddlers?
Sifting through the propagandistic tripe of the Kuku Hill NDC Campaign Center, one would easily be misled into believing that Ghana's foremost legendary dictator, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, once held the chairmanship of any continental or even sub-regional grouping. The fact of the matter is that Nkrumah was as equally divisive as a leader both at home, in Ghana, and abroad on the African continent. It would actually take the highly unlikely intervention of Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie, no convicted and visionary pan-Africanist, to induce even the rudimentary semblance of African unification in the form of the veritable talkshop that was the erstwhile Organization of African Unity (OAU).
Today, the so-called African Union (AU) is fundamentally no more functionally meaningful than its antecedent organization. I am also not sure that many a forward-looking African wakes up every morning having rapturously dreamt about African unification with such morally and culturally regressive countries as Kenya, whose male-dominated parliament recently passed a law making polygamy a heady wave of the future.
I have, also, yet to hear the leader of any African country express concern about such morally and politically impolitic measure. For surely, male-oriented polygamy/polygyny in the postcolonial era cannot be touted as an ideal conjugal arrangement in a civil-service culture in which salary scales and payouts are not in any way correlated with the family size or conjugal appetite of the average male civil servant.
In essence, the very bad example set by the Kenyan legislators is one that is apt to both unwisely encourage rank kleptocracy among the ranks of politicians, on the one hand, and a drastic reduction in the quality of life among otherwise conjugally disciplined male civil servants. I also don't see a highly civilized Ghana being literally led by the nose into a dubious African unification by the pathologically homophobic leadership of such "arrivants" or "emergent" countries as Uganda and Nigeria.
If President Mahama brings to his ECOWAS chairmanship any meaningful remedy, such as stopping the real-estate properties of our diplomatic missions from being shamefully converted into illegal gambling casinos in the name of diplomatic immunity, then, of course, I would have no qualms in unreservedly backing him up, and even heartily congratulating him, for having so auspiciously, and opportunely, assumed the august Chairmanship of the Economic Community of West African States.
Just remember this, though: President John Agyekum-Kufuor held the reins of ECOWAS chairmanship for two consecutive terms of two years with inimitable poise, deft, flair and finesse. And we hope that the same encomiums could be fittingly heaped on President Mahama by the end of his tenure.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
March 31, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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