Akufo-Addo Is Still The Greatest Threat To Peace In Ghana.

Akufo-Addo Is Still The Greatest Threat To Peace In Ghana.

Feature Article, by Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

I am often bothered by the sheer sense of irresponsibility on the part of those who try to play with the fire of religious strife for their parochial political ends. It is as though they have no respect for Muslims, and can just ask them to go to war for them on demand! One such disgusting attempt can even be seen from the title of an article published on Ghanaweb, “NDC Crusaders Calling For Genocide On Moslems”, by Justice Sarpong, Feature Article of Wednesday, 9 May 2012. Sadly enough, what we read in the article and witness there is a clear admission by some supporters of the NPP that they no longer have any confidence in their own ability to campaign constructively to move our nation forward. Hence the need to resort to such scatterbrained tactic.

One would have thought that our politicians would demonstrate a real mettle of statesmanship and rise up above petty party differences and put Ghana first in all their endeavours. It appears the disastrous attempt to make free education the hallmark of his 2012 Campaign have made them rather shy to even discuss the solutions they envisage to the hydra-headed problems facing Ghanaians today. Nothing of that sort has been forth-coming, apart from the chanting of war songs and spending a lot of energy in hiding behind tribal and religious passions to do the political job of causing confusion on their behalf!

It is in this sense that I see the article by Justice Sarpong as a thinly-veiled attempt to provoke a religious conflict in the country without any basis other than the say-so of the Ghana Muslim Coalition for Reformation whose intentions and abilities remain unknown to the general public. There is no way one can even compare what he purports to report as an incendiary statement by the NDC candidate, the Alajo Obama. Assuming that those silly utterances were indeed true and they emanated from "the flatulence and spastic rantings by this NDC Alajo Obama", there is no way that could be comparable with the rantings of Ken Agyapong!
 
Ken Agyapong specifically declared war, called for the lynching of human beings, irrespective of party political affiliation. According to Ken, the people of the Ashanti Region should lynch the NPP National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, a Ga, on sight, if he ever sets foot in the Ashanti Region! Ken Agyapong did broadcast this diatribe live on radio, and there are millions of independent witnesses. There is no verifiable source that confirms even the words being attributed to Alajo Obama are true! Trying to equate one million cedi worth of goods, with any goods worth ten cedis is to devalue one million cedis to the level of ten cedis!
Any attempt to reduce the magnitude of this stupidity displayed by Ken Agyapong, will simply not wash. Dubious as the source of the information concerning the so-called Alajo Obama's call for Christians to "rise up", it does not call for a war. Calling upon people to go and lynch others is not the same as calling on anyone to "rise up", because the others are offering scholarships to their children! Perhaps he wants to mean they must "rise up" and equally offer scholarships to Christian children, just as the Muslims do. That would have been my own conclusion, that our two major religions in the country to positively learn from each other for the benefit of our children. This is different from asking Ghanaians to go and lynch left and right!

Justice Sarpong concluded his piece with: “The flatulence and spastic rantings by this NDC Alajo Obama should be condemned by all peace loving Ghanaians to avoid maelstrom in Ghana.” In trying to make an anthill look like a mountain Justice Sarpong deliberately attacks an imaginary "flatulence and spastic rantings" and in the process, releases quite a large quantity of his own! If Justice Sarpong wants a sincere discussion of the threats to peace in Ghana, he must know where to begin. The real threat facing Ghana today is Nana Akufo-Addo who is increasingly becoming unlikely to concede defeat, even if he himself was convinced he had genuinely lost, and plunge the country into a political strife, not Muslims nor Christians.

Whatever you do, try to take religion out of your politics and avoid such desperate attempts to call on others to fight your enemy on your behalf. It is funny because lack of tact is transparent. There is obviously nothing ingenious about this! The last time around, Akufo-Addo refused to concede defeat, he merely "acknowledged" the results declared by the Electoral Commission, whilst insisting that he had been cheated. Today, we know that at the time Akufo-Addo was throwing dust into our eyes with his "one-touch victory" mantra, he was fully apprised of his impending defeat at the polls by his own pollster, Professor Larry Gibson!

In the lead up to the 2008 general elections, it was pathetic to see Okoampa-Ahoofe taking a free-ride on the Akufo-Addo campaign-hype of “one-touch” victory, even though the NPP flag-bearer had been left in no doubt by Professor Larry Gibson concerning his own chances of winning against the then NDC candidate, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills. Thanks to the revelations in Dr. Arthur Kennedy's book, “Chasing the elephant into the bush”, we now know that even as Akufo-Addo was stubbornly refusing to concede defeat to the winning candidate, as expected of any decent politician, Akufo-Addo was already aware he stood no chance of winning the race in the first place!

This is the real threat we face today! A dishonest politician who refuses to concede a simple electoral defeat and is doing everything possible to cause trouble as a result, including disgusting attempts to fan inter-ethnic hatred, religious animosity, xenophobia, and other cheap and sensational means to whip up primitive loyalty to their nefarious agenda of subverting the will of the people! How come that even before the 2008 elections, Akufo-Addo's own private pollsters predicted an Atta-Mills victory, yet Akufo-Addo claimed he had been cheated when he lost? The desperate cheap tactics deployed at the last minute in attempts to stem the tide with “the Rawlings' Hit-list” hoax only worsened matters, as President Mills emerged not only victorious but also to be “his own man”. 
 

On the other hand, Akufo-Addo's popularity, insufficient as it was in 2008, has been on the wane, as a result of reckless statements such as “We Akans are not cowards” and so 2012, All die be die!”, coupled with a series of drug-related scandals and allegations. The most damning of them all being the Wikileaks cable that points to his penchant to smoke marijuana early in the morning! Having clearly lost the political space, the only option they think of is exploring the military means to subvert the will of the people, kill and maim in the name of “All die be die!”

It seems we are sitting on a time bomb, with a serial sore-loser who is most unlikely to accept defeat even in the event that he himself knew to have been beaten in a free and fair contest! The is where the trouble is going to come from! If Akufo-Addo did not even feel embarrassed calling on the NPP Administration to protect NPP members before they take the law into their own hands, what is he not going to say under an NDC Administration? If he knew in advance that he was going to lose the elections, and come election day, he loses the elections, but refuses to concede defeat, what are we to expect of such a person? This is what Justice Sarpong needs to look at, if he sincerely wants peace in Ghana!

Forward Ever! Backwards Never!

Sincerely,
Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.
/twitter.com/#!/TheOdikro

On Education, “Is Akufo-Addo Doing A 419?” Part One

by Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

INTRODUCTION:
I listened to Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana's 2012 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, the NPP, talking hard on the BBC World Service radio, on his campaign promise of free secondary school education for all, and I was utterly disappointed. To be honest and frank about it, it even made me smell a very unusual rat. For the purposes of this article, the relevant part of the interview begins from the eighteenth minute into the conversation in the 24 minute interview he gave to HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur, on Monday, 5 March, 2012. It is the part that deals with his educational policy.

The reason why I paid attention to this part of the interview is because, like many Ghanaians, I am deeply troubled with the mess our educational system is in right now. Unfortunately, it was literally a mind-blowing experience! I have since been wondering if it was even a very good idea at all, to have listened him. This is because, I suspect, I have been traumatised by the experience.

For those of you who might be familiar with the symptoms, mine include an intrusive and repetitive need to wonder aloud as to whether or not Nana Akufo-Addo really thought he could get away with such a lugubrious drollery? You see, I have not been able to sleep properly after hearing what I heard! The only solution is to wonder aloud and clearly. But more of those later...

BBC's HARDtalk INTERVIEW: On Education:
First of all, I do not wish to prejudice the reader until the bare facts are clearly ascertained. I do encourage the readers to study first the interview for themselves, and form their own conclusions. I remain confident that most will agree with mine, stated below. You may listen to the relevant portion from the interview on BBC's HARDtalk: Nana Akufo Addo 05 Mar 12 from the 18.59th minute to 20.33. [1] I have also provided a transcript of the relevant portion to facilitate the analysis.

Transcript of BBC's HARDtalk, by the Odikro:
Nana Akufo Addo 05 March, 2012 from the 19.59th minute to 20.33:
PRESENTER: The greatest indictment, frankly, of your government, is the way in which you squandered money and left this huge hole in the budget deficit and I think you would now acknowledge that that was a profound problem the last time your party was in power?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: No, I don't believe... I don't believe... I think that... No, I don't accept this proposition at all.
PRESENTER: I think what the Ghanaian people, it seems to me, from reading a lot of stuff from the Ghanaian press, want to know is, where exactly is the money going to come from next time around if you are in power, for some of the very extravagant promises you've made? You for example have offered free secondary schooling for all Ghanaians. A promise you say you would absolutely deliver in your four years in power?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Absolutely! Absolutely! Absolutely.
PRESENTER: So have you costed it? How much will it cost?”
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: The costing... the costing... is being... is being done. I mean very very soon we will be in the position.
PRESENTER: No, you must have costed it! You can't make a promise like that without costing it?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: No, no, no, very, very soon we are going to be...
PRESENTER: How much?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Very, very soon, we are going to be... put it together. I prefer...
PRESENTER: You don't know how much?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: I do know how much, understand, but...
PRESENTER: Oh, then tell me that?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: I will prefer to tell the people of Ghana directly before I tell you.
PRESENTER: What do you m...? Many of them are on HARDtalk, you can tell me and they will know?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: No, it doesn't matter, I prefer to make that statement to the people of Ghana directly first, as to the cost, and any time...
PRESENTER: So you do know the cost?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Oh, we do. We have a very good idea how... and how also we are going to finance it.
PRESENTER: Well Okay, you are obviously not going to give me the figures but just tell me how you are going to pay for it. Because clearly, it is going to be a great cost if you are going to train teachers, going to build new schools... ?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: All of that have been adequately costed and we believe that first of all, the new revenues will help, more efficient management of what we have now, growth in the Ghanaian economy - these are the three sources which are going to enable us to fulfil that promise. And it is a promise that has been made solemnly to the Ghanaian people, and it is going to be solemnly kept. Not because it is a campaign promise, but because it is a necessity for the future of our country to educate all our young people...
PRESENTER: Indeed...

COMMENTS...
As I was saying earlier, the “only solution is to wonder aloud and clearly”. And that is exactly what I set out to do: wonder aloud, and give my reasons for cause to this wonder. Apart from that, I was also deeply saddened by the fact that listening to Akufo-Addo, an important politician in Ghana, on the radio, automatically reminded me of the 419 e-mail scams that we have all become familiar with. The thought came to my mind effortlessly. I think it was an instinctive warning or a reminder that there really are desperate people out there, with doubtful intentions and abilities, ready to ruthlessly swindle anyone lowering their guard!

Particularly, I realized the stunning similarities between these 419 scams and the performance of Akufo-Addo, vis-a-vis his campaign promise of “free education for all”, how he is going about it, and the equivocations and self-contradictions within such a short space of time, and I did not like what I found in common between the two. My thesis is that Akufo-Addo has been around for some time. We have not known him at any other time championing free education in the past. Even as a Presidential candidate in the 2008 Presidential election, we did not hear any of that.

So what explains this new passion? And why does he not want to share the details for a national discussion? Making a promise of free education for all without providing a single detail, is exactly what we mean by an empty promise. The only reason a politician in a campaign year would do that is to reduce the sacred hopes and yearnings of our struggling youth for a decent future, into a cynical political joke of an opportunist who is ready to dupe everyone, even our deepest wishes and the most cherished of aspirations, for the sake of political power.

1. AKUFO-ADDO Shows That He Is Not Serious...
First, Akufo-Addo is clearly fumbling. He has been promising free secondary education without even bothering to figure out how much it was going to cost. He answers the simple question as though he had never thought of it before. He shifts positions until he has made a complete about turn in just a couple of minutes apart! Proving clearly that he is making “a promise like that without knowing how much it would cost”! And surprisingly and timidly, he stammers out the fact that he was not in a position to answer a simple question, “How much will it cost?”

Indeed, what he says initially is that “the costing is being done”, and that “very, very soon we will be in the position”, plus, “Very very soon, we are going to be... put it together”, and then all of a sudden, “I do know how much”! This type of behaviour is known in the Akan language as “Ore totow paapaa do.” It literally means “he is throwing it, one on top of the other”. Where “one” here refers to not just any normal lie, but exclusively to type of lies lacking in intelligence, which is the hallmark of a typical “419”.

This 419 threshold is more than being at the end of one's wits. It is also a good barometer of how desperate Akufo-Addo is becoming, and the lengths he is ready to go. It made me to feel angry and frustrated because I find it nauseating to hear a politician trying to pull our legs and toying with an issue as sensitive as education. Don't get me wrong, it is not that Akufo-Addo has no right to promise us free education. On the contrary, I like very much the idea of free education coming from Akufo-Addo of late, what gives me the creeps is the way he is going about it.

The only positive thing about this newly-found focus on education, is the hope that this might facilitate a national consensus on free education. I dare say that perhaps, if this had been a product of a lifetime of demonstrable passionate commitment to education on his part, it would have made a difference in not raising too many eye-brows in the first place, and also in the quality of the answers he gave at the interview. For example, some NPP politicians like Mr. Dan Botwe or Dr. Arthur Kennedy could most probably do better one day, if they continue with a path that both started as student leaders and continued as politicians. All is not entirely lost, but Akufo-Addo cannot be serious!

2. AKUFO-ADDO Contradicts Himself...
Akufo-Addo is asked a simple question:
PRESENTER: So have you costed it? How much will it cost?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: The costing... the costing... is being... is being done. I mean very very soon we will be in the position.

It is quite understandable that in conducting a gargantuan operation of this scale, and providing what Akufo-Addo calls, “true value for money”, costing it would certainly take all the time for the campaign, and it might not suffice. What I found strange is the change from the future tense, to the past tense, when the costing came up in the end of the same interview. It is a change of grammar showcasing a monumental lie:

PRESENTER: Well Okay, you are obviously not going to give me the figures but just tell me how you are going to pay for it. Because clearly, it is going to be a great cost if you are going to train teachers, going to build new schools... ?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: All of that have been adequately costed and we believe that first of all, the new revenues will help, more efficient management of what we have now, growth in the Ghanaian economy - these are the three sources which are going to enable us to fulfil that promise.

The jump from "The costing... the costing... is being... is being done. I mean very very soon we will be in the position." to "All of that have been adequately costed", is absolutely symptomatic of a self-conscious liar with a very short memory bordering on the Alzheimer condition. You cannot be in the process of gathering the relevant information and at the same time be clear about the cost! More so , when you yourself claim clearly that you are yet to "put it together"! It makes him come off as someone with the easy manners of a confidence trickster. It is when this is accompanied by an abject lack of coherence and or, basic intelligence that we have, what I call, the 419 syndrome. It normally attacks desperadoes, or potential criminals, who do not have the mental wherewithal to carry out their nefarious activities.

The “costing is being done”, and “the costing has been done” do not have the same meaning!

3. AKUFO-ADDO Is Really Not Ready With The Figures, But Willing To Lie About It...
One sure way of confirming, whether or not Akufo-Addo is suffering from the 419 syndrome is to find out about his own views concerning his performance in the interview. If he is deeply remorseful and embarrassed with his inept performance, then perhaps it is another problem other than the 419 condition. If however, he believes that he did very well, then he would have passed the litmus test, as a fully qualified 419 politician! It is pathetic how most of these so-called confidence tricksters are not even aware when they have betrayed their own trade with their own clumsiness.
I see as the only reason accounting for Akufo-Addo's swift abandoning of his initial position of "the costing is being done" to:

PRESENTER: You don't know how much?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: I do know how much...

The only material explanation for this shift in position is to avoid the menace of the looming charge that he is making a promise such a promise without costing it. Yet from his performance, that is exactly what he is doing in reality. He felt the need to tell the lie in order to beg the question:

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: The costing... the costing... is being... is being done. I mean very very soon we will be in the position.
"PRESENTER: No, you must have costed it! You can't make a promise like that without costing it?"

This is where the whole trouble began: “You can't make a promise like that without costing it?" So of course, just as the Presenter said, “No, you must have costed it!” Akufo-Addo must have immediately sensed danger, and therefore “got to know” the cost immediately he understood the implications of admitting he did not know. Akufo-Addo must have felt intimidated enough to rapidly massage the facts just after this question by saying immediately after this confession that he had costed it already, even though he just admitted that costing was not ready!

He did not have the self-confidence to maintain the original position which is more likely to be true and easier to believe and defend. Like a low-grade 419 con artist, he was pre-occupied by the need to appear and sound confident, ready and capable, so he ends up boxing himself into a hole of equivocations, stammering, and contradictions, making a mockery of himself. His troubles would have ended if he had admitted that he was just talking thin air with nothing yet on paper, even though he could already identify the general direction.

And then he could have swayed the aggressive questioner from trying to make him a laughing-stock, and rather spare with him on the feasibility of the venture. Had he done that, he would have walked out of HARDtalk with high marks. This is a big pity because, considering the level of mediocrity now plaguing the leadership of the NPP, the National Chairman who is living in his own world, the General Secretary, a comedian whose comedies are not even funny, Akufo-Addo was really the last hope of the party, and he flunked it!

Perhaps, it is only Akufo-Addo who thinks that people believe his free education promise is not a campaign promise, simply because he says so. Is this clearly not a statement known by its maker to be untrue and made only in order to deceive? Mother nature usually has ways of protecting her own against the evil one, as they can often be smelt from afar. I certainly smell the 419 rat here! Is it not amazing the way by which they remain completely oblivious of the fact that one could see through their obvious tricks? Let God be praised! A regular occupational hazard of charlatans of this nature is the fact that they keep bumping into people far more intelligent than their types. How can a person less intelligent than the average Ghanaian, propose himself for the high office of the President? Is it because he grew up as a young man seeing his father as a President, and liked the money he must have stolen?

4. AKUFO-ADDO Plays With The Sentiments...
Finding the right solutions to what ails our educational system is certainly no easy task. What no politician should be allowed to do and get away with, is to begin making promises of free education, without any preparations whatsoever, as we see so clearly in this interview. I have been informed that Akufo-Addo reads my articles attentively, thus if he is reading this article, I am putting it directly to him that he is making these promises simply because he feels it will make look good. It is a campaign décor, a “419” gimmick from someone who does seem to know what campaign message to adopt, and desperate enough to try anything!

The last time around, in the 2008 elections, Nana Akufo-Addo's major campaign message was that he was going to double the police force, if elected. He went through the length and breadth of statistics to prove that even though the country faces more alarming inadequacies in the teaching, medical, and other fields, the doubling of the police force was the most important, and the most urgent of our problems. Without any explanations, we do not hear anything about doubling the police force, what we hear are three things: Education, Education, and unlike Rick Perry, he did not forget the third one, except that, just like the “doubling of the police force,” he clearly has no clue about how much all this is going to cost, and is ready to lie about it.

He was conducted this charade of doubling the police force, without ever being confronted about costing issues. This time around, his luck run out! Going by what we know about the Akufo-Addo campaign, as revealed by Otchere-Darko is that they have no convictions of their own. They normally tailor their campaign messages in the way commercial products are advertised. Thus, if you discover that people will vote for a government that will provide public toilets, they automatically include in their manifesto the building of public toilets as a priority. This is good for our democracy, but it can also breed charlatans. Where candidates have no convictions of their own except “electoral indices” and what is “marketable” the politics based on principles fly through the window!

For instance, Otchere-Darko gives us a hint from the Akufo-Addo camp version of the Holy Grail, a report supposedly written by Professor Larry Gibson, kept as a top secret by the selected few in the Akufo-Addo campaign team. He writes: “There is a lot of talk these days that the NPP lost the 2008 elections because the party did not market well the achievements of President Kufuor. Yet, Larry Gibson's polls had shown that Ghanaians simply were not convinced about the NPP record on the economy – the most important indicator on all the electoral indices. Until Larry Gibson's findings, we were all looking at the major indices concerning the significant reduction of incidents of poverty and the expansion of people's purchasing power, high GDP, etc.” Therefore, the necessary changes were made to bait their political hooks to suit the electoral fish!

5. AKUFO-ADDO Resorts To An Obvious Subterfuge...
If he were sincere about it, he would certainly seize each platform to talk passionately, sincerely, and openly talk about it and not beg for the opportunity to “talk directly to Ghanaians first” about whatsoever, like an American pleading “the Fifth Amendment”, or a criminal who wants to first “speak to his lawyer”! The “I want to talk directly first to Ghanaians” is nothing but a deceptive stratagem aimed at wriggling his way out of an inconvenient predicament of being exposed to all as a hoax! A mere 419.

The word “subterfuge” is variously defined as, “That to which one resorts for escape or concealment; an artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument” or “...an artifice or expedient used to evade a rule, escape a consequence, hide something. We all know what Akufo-Addo is hiding from! Why did he not tell Ghanaians directly, about the cost, the first time he announced the policy? What prevented him to show that he was making these promises after having carefully costed it in the first place? Does a serious politician need a lame plea about the need to “speak directly to Ghanaians first”, in order to escape a simple question, “No, you must have costed it! You can't make a promise like that without costing it?"

Indeed, in his shoes, I would have striven by now to have given this campaign a national ownership by encouraging national brain-storming, collecting and collating ideas, and striving to even develop a bi-partisan approach to ensure effectiveness and continuity. That way you take the politics out of it, and save it from becoming a mere campaign gimmick. If that had been the case, he would have avoided the need to equivocate about the obviously non-existent details.

What makes this even more pathetic is the fact that Nana Akufo-Addo announced the free secondary education the same week he promised that he was not going to make campaign promises. Just after saying he was not going to be like the NDC, that promised everything and is doing nothing. At the same time, he also said he was going to follow the strategy the NDC used to take power from the NPP. Then all of a sudden he started the “house-to-house” campaign, then a very big campaign promise - free education for all! - without even thinking about how much this would cost!

"The voters understand that they are electing a person more than they are electing a program.” Larry Gibson is reported to have counselled Akufo-Addo. “That´s universal,... Far more important is the assessment of what type of person this is,... Policies are important, but for elections people want a sense of the person, the more successful candidates are not necessarily those with the most popular policies" [3], and if I might add, who sounds sincere and intelligent. What we saw and heard in this interview was the exact opposite.

And to add insults unto injuries, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo even wants us to believe that his campaign promise is not a campaign promise! This type of arrant taradiddle is not new in Ghanaian politics, even though it is mercifully rare. The nearest gaffe that is comparable was made as far back as 1978 by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. Thus this clearly brings Nana Akufo-Addo to the ranks of a semi-literate former Ghanaian military ruler, whose mental acumen was equally seen to be well below par, in the way he pleaded for the consent of Ghanaians to help him to kindly prolong his military dictatorship with a plea for his Union Government: “The unity that I am talking of, is not about the Unity of one person. No, how can one person be united? It is about the unity, of the individual”!

Fortunately, Ghanaians know how to deal with jokers and charlatans of this sort. They have done it before, and will do it again!

Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!!

REFERENCES:
[1] Nana Akufo Addo, HARDtalk, BBC, 05 Mar 12, Mon, 5 Mar 12, Duration: 24 mins, Updated: Daily, Episodes available: Indefinitely: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ht#playepisode2
[2] Misrepresenting Larry Gibson Misrepresenting Larry Gibson, 29 July 2010, Daily Guide Editorial, by Qanawu Gabby, ModernGhana.com http://bit.ly/xaduxv]
[3] Tell them that they may know Feature Article | 21 December 2008 - ModernGhana.com http://bit.ly/w3TPiK

Akufo-Addo On Education: BBC's HARDtalk

Akufo-Addo On Education: BBC's HARDtalk

Transcript of BBC's HARDtalk, by the Odikro: [1]

Nana Akufo Addo 05 Mar 12 from the 18.59th minute to 20.33:

PRESENTER: The greatest indictment, frankly, of your government, is the way in which you squandered money and left this huge hole in the budget deficit and I think you would now acknowledge that that was a profound problem the last time your party was in power?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: No, I don't believe. I don't believe. I think that... No, I don't accept this proposition at all.

PRESENTER: I think what the Ghanaian people, it seems to me, from reading a lot of stuff from the Ghanaian press, want to know is, where exactly is the money going to come from next time around if you are in power, for some of the very extravagant promises you've made? You for example have offered free secondary schooling for all Ghanaians. A promise you say you would absolutely deliver in your four years in power?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Absolutely! Absolutely! Absolutely.

PRESENTER: So have you costed it? How much will it cost?”

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: The costing... the costing... is being... is being done. I mean very very soon we will be in the position.

PRESENTER: No, you must have costed it. You can't make a promise like that without costing it?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: No, no, no, very very soon we are going to be...

PRESENTER: How much?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Very very soon, we are going to be... put it together. I prefer...

PRESENTER: You don't know how much?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: I do know how much, understand, but...

PRESENTER: Oh, then tell me that?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: I will prefer to tell the people of Ghana directly before I tell you.

PRESENTER: What do you m...? Many of them are on HARDTalk, you can tell me and they will know?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: No, it doesn't matter, I prefer to make that statement to the people of Ghana directly first, as to the cost, and any time...
PRESENTER: So you do know the cost?
NANA AKUFO-ADDO: Oh, we do. We have a very good idea how... and how also we are going to finance it.

PRESENTER: Well Okay, you are obviously not going to give me the figures but just ell me how you are going to pay for it. Because clearly, it is going to be a great cost if you are going to train teachers, going to build new schools... ?

NANA AKUFO-ADDO: All of that have been adequately costed and we believe that first of all, the new revenues will help, more efficient management of what we have now, growth in the Ghanaian economy - these are the three sources which are going to enable us to fulfil that promise. And it is a promise that has been made solemnly to the Ghanaian people, and it is going to be solemnly kept. Not because it is a campaign promise, but because it is a necessity for the future of our country to educate all our young people.

Comments, Analysis, Evaluation, coming soon!

Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!!

Cheers!



REFERENCES:

[1] Nana Akufo Addo, HARDtalk, BBC, 05 Mar 12, Mon, 5 Mar 12, (Mon, 5 Mar 12, Duration: 24 mins, Updated: Daily, Episodes available: Indefinitely) http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ht#playepisode2



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Richard Mahoney On Danquah's CIA Connections – Part One

Richard Mahoney On Danquah's CIA Connections – Part One

Feature Article by Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

A Rejoinder to: Richard Mahoney: On Danquah and Nkrumah – Parts One, Feature Article of Wednesday, 14 December 2011, by Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

For those of you who might not be following the politics of this debate, let me give a quick background to it. Dr. J. B. Danquah is considered “the doyen” of Gold Coast politics by the NPP in general, and particularly, by his handful of hard-core followers, mostly his blood relations, who also appear to be clearly and discernibly seeking to take advantage of his over-blown hero-status as a platform to launch their own personal political ambitions. Prominent among that group is Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, Danquah's nephew and flag-bearer of the NPP, one such politician who has firmly hinged his overall political campaign strategy as a continuation of the promotion of the ideals and values of what J.B. Danquah represented. His speech announcing his intention to contest the presidency attests to this campaign packaging. More importantly, he even established the Danquah Institute, pushing his own nephew and a grandson of Danquah, Mr. Otchere-Darko, then Managing Editor of the Statesman to man it.

Akufo-Addo was hoping to ride on the back of Danquah's fame to the Presidency. Things seemed to go smoothly for some time, particularly when NPP was in power, and external funders of right-wing think-tanks have never been difficult to obtain. The growing public awareness of the scandal involving human sacrifice and ritual murder in which Danquah was more than a mere defence attorney led the first body-blow to the carefully crafted image of a “gentle Danquah, meek and mild”, instead of the shameless accomplice to a ritual murder and human sacrifice! The Danquah followers have already been having a hard time with this scandal involving the ritual murder of Nana Akyea Mensah, the Odikro of Apedwa in February 1944, which is beginning to be widely known. Thus an additional scandal exposing such a villain as a CIA agent is another body blow to the propaganda materials they have been churning out about Danquah as a selfless patriot and so on, for obvious reasons.

An exposure of Danquah as a CIA agent, is exactly the kind of thing the Akufo-Addo campaign can ill afford at this time. It throws the entire Akufo-Addo campaign, carefully planned over the years completely out of gear. This explains the deep sense of alarm we saw live on TV when the CIA status of Danquah was revealed by Dr. Boamah Omane. It was quickly understood that after having tied his fate to “the doyen of Gold Coast politics”, J. B. Danquah's fall from grace to grass cannot take place without some of the political consequences washing on the fortunes of Akufo-Addo in the context of the current electoral campaign. Suspicions have already been raised by the links between “all die be die” and the US Africa Command, with what Otchere-Darko calls “Washington’s strategy of working with its regional allies in West Africa to develop relationships that will secure its energy security in the long term.” See: “Obama’s Visit – What’s In It For Us And U.S.?”, by Otchere-Darko, Gabby Asare, Feature Article of Monday, 25 May 2009.

Even though Otchere-Darko's performance was a complete flop, he obviously had very little room to manoeuvre with lies. Let's face it, how can they possibly challenge Richard Mahoney when Okoampa himself is saying: “One source which the followers of Mr. Nkrumah, the so-called Nkrumaists, have consistently, persistently and perennially cited to cast both doubt and aspersions on the integrity of Dr. Danquah is Richard D. Mahoney’s quite authoritative treatise on United States’ foreign policy vis-à-vis Africa during the Eisenhower and the Kennedy years, titled JFK: Ordeal in Africa (New York: Oxford UP, 1983). But that the author’s father, William P. Mahoney, was the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana during the Kennedy years, has predictably served to further enhance the credibility and authority of his book in the opinion of these diehard Nkrumaists.”? See: “Richard Mahoney: On Danquah and Nkrumah – Part One" by Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame, Feature Article of Wednesday, 14 December 2011. It is clearly a losing battle here. Perhaps this explains why Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe is so keen even to flog the dead horse with irrelevant tales! Perhaps he is being fooled by the Churchillian definition of success as “the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”!

The incontrovertible fact that has remained equally unassailable to all attempts by Akufo-Addo handlers has been the revelation that point clearly to J.B. Danquah's involvement with the US Central Intelligence Agency, (CIA). The sad thing about this revelation is that the Akufo-Addo team appear to be fully aware of the damaging implications not only on Danquah's image, but also on Akufo-Addo's own political career, but appear to be caught off-guard and helpless. Their number one problem is that the facts are true, and they do not seem to have any intelligent response. It was simply disgusting to see Otchere-Darko going into tantrums at the mere mention of this on TV, and remaining conspicuously silent particularly after an article I wrote, “J. B. Danquah Was A CIA Asset!” Feature Article of Saturday, 1 October 2011, by Mensah, Nana Akyea. Otchere-Darko kept silent. I followed it up with “Ochere-Darko Must Render Proper Apologies For 'Stupid' Insults!” Again there was dead silence. I wrote a Part Two and made sure that Otchere-Darko had a copy by e-mail. It was a shrivelled and completely flattened Otchere-Darko who responded:

“gabby@danquahinstitute.org via srs.bis7.eu.blackberry.com to me, 12/10/2011.

Re: nanaakyeamensah@gmail.com has shared: Ochere-Darko Must Render Proper Apologies For “Stupid” Insults! Part II

Thank you. Most thoughtful!

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Vodafone”

That was all. Your guess is as good as mine as to what explains such an inexplicable climb down. Qanawu, of all people, refused to “talk and die”! He has since been avoiding the topic like a plague! He knows in his own bones that there is no antidote to facts, and the best solution is to avoid the topic entirely. Which is understandable, even though it leaves the Akufo-Addo campaign politically orphaned and stranded in the wilderness of exposure of what they are capable of. Considering the facts, silence is perhaps the best solution to this problem. It is therefore clear that if Okoampa-Ahoofe had consulted Otchere-Darko before writing his article, Otchere-Darko would have told him to “let sleeping dogs lie”. But that is certainly the kind of advice Okoampa would misconstrue as an irritating indication of a lack of confidence in his ability to re-write history in his capacity as an Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City.

The funny thing here is that Okoampa probably thinks he is helping Akufo-Addo! I have often maintained, Okoampa always reminds me of the Roman general who said, I more fear a stupid ally than I fear a clever enemy”. With the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute on the run, it came as no surprise that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., would naturally step in to save the situation. What we need to make clear is the fact that we know that there is hardly a Danquah follower who did not know that Danquah was a CIA agent, even though they would vehemently deny it in public, just as Danquah himself did in his time. The only hitch this time is that both in terms of content and author, they are finding it impossible to challenge Richard Mahoney's assertions that J. B. Danquah's family received CIA stipends when he was in prison. We are dealing with people who would ask you for the receipts to prove that the CIA was paying any money to Danquah. Thus, it is exceptionally fortuitous that the facts and the evidence came from a completely unexpected source.

It has not been easy since 1958 to lay hands on the hard evidence to categorically link and nail Danquah as a CIA agent, even though it was very clear to the Ghanaian intelligence that he was up to something. As Paul Lee explains in “Documents Expose the first evidence that emerged were anecdotal:

“While charges of U.S. involvement are not new, support for them was lacking until 1978, when anecdotal evidence was provided from an unlikely source - a former CIA case officer, John Stockwell, who reported first-hand testimony in his memoir, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story.

'The inside story came to me,' Stockwell wrote, 'from an egotistical friend, who had been chief of the [CIA] station in Accra [Ghana] at the time.' (Stockwell was stationed one country away in the Ivory Coast.)

Subsequent investigations by The New York Times and Covert Action Information Bulletin identified the station chief as Howard T. Banes, who operated undercover as a political officer in the U.S. Embassy.”

And perhaps that would have been all we would have ever known had Richard Mahoney not published his book. In 2002, John R. Stockwell, a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of duty explains in an interview:

“Howard Banes who was the CIA station chief in Accra engineered the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Now, obviously, you can look at it in different ways. A Ghanaian might say I thought we did it. Inside the CIA, though, it was quite clear. Howard Banes had a double promotion and an Intelligence Star for having overthrown Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.

The magic of it, what made it so exciting for the CIA, was that Howard Banes had had enough imagination and drive to run the operation without ever documenting what he was doing, and to sweep along his bosses in such a way, they knew what he was doing, tacitly they approved, but there wasn't one shred of paper that he generated that would nail the CIA hierarchy as being responsible.”

As Dr. Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, puts it:

“Danquah’s detention under the PDA resulted from his involvements in coup plots in collaboration with the CIA. During the first treason trial of Awhiatey-Amponsah-Apaloo conspiracy of November 1958, after the passage of the PDA, J. B. Danquah was heard assuring a foreign diplomat that Nkrumah’s government would be overthrown in December 1958 (Bing). But the security forces did not act on it. They kept close eyes on him and other enemies of the State in order to gather hard evidence.” See: "Fallacies of J. B. Danquah's Heroic Legacy (V)", Feature Article of Monday, 25 September 2006 Columnist: Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame Dr.

For those of us looking for evidence of “receipts” of CIA payments to Danquah before we can be convinced that J.B. Danquah was indeed a CIA asset, the “receipt” came in the form of a book. As we can see from Okoampa's accounts, Richard Mahoney was no admirer of Kwame Nkrumah, and he was obviously not writing to please Pan-Africanists, when he noted that:

“The matter concerned Dr. J. B. Danquah, Nkrumah's opponent in the Presidential elections of 1960, who had been released from prison a few months after Mahoney's arrival as ambassador. Danquah paid a visit one November day to the embassy to ask Mahoney why the funds his family had been receiving during his imprisonment had been cut off after his release.

This was the first time Mahoney had heard of the arrangement. After Danquah left, he summoned the CIA chief of station to ask why he had not been advised by the agency's association with Danquah. Dissatisfied with the explanation, Mahoney flew to Washington two days later and personally informed Kennedy about the matter.” Read from page 184-185.

As I noted earlier in “J. B. Danquah Was A CIA Asset!”, Feature Article of Saturday, 1 October 2011 Columnist: Mensah, Nana Akyea:

“The story in the book, “JFK: Ordeal in Africa”, is very clear. According to Richard Mahoney, Danquah’s collaboration with the CIA became clear when he went to the US Embassy, after Nkrumah had pardon Danquah and other detainees on June 2, 1962, to ask “why the funds his family had been receiving during his imprisonment had been cut after his release.” As Dr. Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, correctly recounts, “This caused Mr. Mahoney, the new US Ambassador to Ghana to summon “the CIA chief of station to ask why he had not been advised of the agency’s association with Danquah.” Displeased with the explanation, “Mahoney flew to Washington two days later and personally informed Kennedy about the matter” (Mahoney)." - Feature Article of Monday, 25 September 2006, Columnist: Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame Dr., Fallacies of J. B. Danquah's Heroic Legacy (V)”.

I think there is no easy way to deny a fact that is published by an authoritative source, but Okoampa's pathetic attempts to beat about the bush only helps Ghanaians to focus more on what he wants to divert our attention from. An ugly tactic that did not go down well was the attempt by Otchere-Darko to use insults and “takashi” or “all die be die” in response to these allegations. Since the event happened live on radio and TV programme on Joy FM and Multi TV, most Ghanaians did see, and most would easily recall the disgraceful manner the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute put up in the course of the discussion on the Founder's Day, last September. It was pathetic. Mr. Kweku Baako was talking about the need for a broad political consensus across Ghana's political spectrum.

“That will dilute the whole thing.” Dr. Omane-Boamah would not agree. In supporting his claim, he insisted that it would be wrong to include former “CIA agents like Dr. J. Danquah” as a founder of Ghana. It is precisely at this point that Otchere-Darko's misbehaviour began:

“Would you stop this stupidity?” Gabby asked angrily. “Would you stop this stupidity? Why is he so stupid? You are sitting here and accusing somebody of being a CIA agent, what sort of stupidity is that? What is this stupidity? This is stupidity… you consider a founder of Ghana as a CIA agent, what sort of stupidity is this? ...this is pure stupidity.”

Gabby Otchere Darko was then asked by the host of the show to apologize to listeners and Dr. Omane Boamah for the insulting language but Gabby would only apologize to listeners. He stubbornly refused to apologize to the deputy Minister. He rather chose the option of walking out of the studio than to apologize for the insults. He was subsequently asked to leave the studios for his refusal to apologize to Omane Boamah, since that was the rule. Gabby Otchere Darko accepted the option of not apologizing and walking out to apologize and stay, and walked off the live program stating:

“When you want us to have an intellectual programme like this, you don't bring people like this. I am not going to apologize, I can apologize to the viewers and listeners but not him. He insults J.B. Danquah and you want me to apologize to him? …I am not going to do that. Why should I do that? … If that is what you want I will walk out on your programme, I won't do it!”

I remember the reaction of Ekow Nelson: “Okoampa and Otchere-Darko are getting overly emotional about the wrong side of this issue. they are arguing that JB Danquah did not need any motivation from a foreign government to destabilize and overthrow the elected government of Ghana. He did what the CIA would have liked him to do but took no money for it! He did all of that pro bono! So why is that redeeming for Dr. Danquah?” And here was my own: “The only way out I saw for Gabby in this predicament was to have honestly admitted the fact that the CIA paid stipends to J.B. Danquah's wife whilst in prison, explained why this was so, and to have left the public in peace to go and find out for themselves! He could then have added, as he seems to explain so eloquently with his “friend of America” excuses, that even if Danquah was a CIA agent, he did it for the good of the nation but not for stipends. And he could have allowed the public to judge for themselves who is really stupid!” See: "Ochere-Darko Must Render Proper Apologies For “Stupid” Insults! Part I", by Nana Akyea Mensah, Featured Articles | 7 October 2011.

Even Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe was embarrassed enough to confess that the reaction of the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, Gabriel Asare Ochere-Darko, to the allegations that “Danquah was a CIA agent”, was a "rather startlingly infantile reaction", even though he agrees with him! See: "Omane-Boamah Deserved that Bit of It", Feature Article of Friday, 30 September 2011. So I was completely taken aback, and could not believe my eyes at first, when I saw an article by Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., on this topic. But even more shocking than the fool-hardy idea of commenting on what has apparently been declared “a lost battle” and is fast becoming a taboo topic in the Akufo-Addo campaign, is the manner with which he beats about the bush and begs the simple question of whether or not J. B. Danquah was a CIA spy!

What Ghanaians want to know are the facts. Did J.B. Danquah go to the US Ambassador to ask why the CIA had stopped paying stipends to his wife? That is the question! Okoampa should stop beating about the bush and tell us why the CIA was paying these "stipends" in question to his hero's wife when he was in prison! Did J.B. Danquah go to see the then US Ambassador to Ghana, after Nkrumah had pardoned him and other detainees on June 2, 1962, to ask “why the funds his family had been receiving during his imprisonment had been cut after his release”? If you claim you read the book, then you ought to know that this very line is also in the book: “why the funds his family had been receiving during his imprisonment had been cut after his release”?

Grandson, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that, Baby!

Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!!

Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro, is a member of the Social Media Outreach Programme of the Pan-Africanist International - a grammar of Pan-Africanism and its manners of articulation! And is also known to Kwame Okoampa, the notorious assassin of character, as: "Ali Masmadi Sasabonsam Jehu Shoaboni Appiah, who now presumptuously and conveniently goes by the name of Nana Akyea-Mensah, the name of a historic man the likes of whose dignity and ineffable cynosure that SOB would never encounter among the male members of his largely pathologically skirt-chasing and pedophiliac family." See: A Typical Ghanaian Prophet, Feature Article | Thu, 21 Jul 2011, by Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

On Nana Akufo-Addo & The Wailers

By Nana Akyea Mensah

Over the past couple of years, watching the countless spins and puerile campaign initiatives by Nana Akufo-Addo and his cheer-leaders, I have had the occasion to be reminded of Sir Walter Scott's “children” who “build statues of snow and weep to see them melt.” One feature of these bands of Akufo-Addo followers that is very difficult to get used to, is the fact that they are equally as noisy when they are building their statues as is their wailing, when these also begin to melt. This article is intended to bring the noise down to acceptable decibels. One of the most notorious of the Akufo-Addo “wailers”, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., a typical Akyem town-crier, whose “talents” include the ability to wail exactly like a baby, is under focus. 

In the lead up to the 2008 general elections, it was pathetic to see Okoampa-Ahoofe taking a free-ride on the Akufo-Addo campaign-hype of “one-touch” victory, even though the NPP flag-bearer had been left in no doubt by Professor Larry Gibson concerning his own chances of winning against the then NDC candidate, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills. Thanks to the revelations in Dr. Arthur Kennedy's book, “Chasing the elephant into the bush”, we now know that even as Akufo-Addo was stubbornly refusing to concede defeat to the winning candidate, as expected of any decent politician, Akufo-Addo was already aware he stood no chance of winning the race in the first place! 

The prognosis of his impending defeat did not stop him from using “one-touch” as his campaign slogan. It did not stop him from refusing to concede his obvious defeat. Akufo-Addo is therefore, himself, the spider at the centre of the yarn of lies being spun by the “wailers” around him, like Okoampa-Ahoofe. Akufo-Addo therefore needs to be dealt with in his own right, except that one of his wailers has developed some Dutch courage to disturb the peace of late, hence this focus on Okoampa-Ahoofe together with his uncle. Out of sheer desperation, and realization that Akufo-Addo is increasingly becoming the under-dog in the race, they are busy preparing the grounds to subvert the will of the people against their inevitable defeat at the 2012 polls.

I think two articles written by Okoampa-Ahoofe epitomize the phenomenon. In the first article, The Tribal Question: Why Akufo-Addo Must Handily Win the Ewe, Okoampa predicts a massive win for his uncle in the Volta Region in these terms, “Anyway, we know that Nana Akufo-Addo will handily win the Ewe vote in Election 2008, because the New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate has guts and mettle for the fearless pursuit of unfettered democratic culture, whereas the nauseatingly timid Prof. Atta-Mills has always toadied up to the orgiastic butchery and immitigable savagery of the Dzelukope Mafia.” (See: The Tribal Question: Why Akufo-Addo Must Handily Win the Ewe, By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., ModernGhana.com, Featured Articles, 9 October 2008).

In the second article, Okoampa-Ahoofe is busily instructing the winning candidate and President-elect, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills, to concede defeat to his losing uncle! See: “Atta-Mills Must Concede Defeat!” By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., ModernGhana.com, Featured Articles, 31 December 2008. So there is nothing new about these wailers, and their “all-die-be-die” because “someone is desperate to cheat us” nonsense. The Busia-Danquah fraternity have never lost an election without crying foul. This they did, even when their own colonial Britain was overseeing the 1951 elections, jailing Nkrumah during the campaigns and financing them! 

 

Try to find out how the Accra Sports stadium came into being, and you would be learning something about how the colonialists financed Danquah's initiative to use sports to attract the teaming Accra youth rallying behind Kwame Nkrumah They even cried foul after the 1951 elections when their own colonial patrons were in charge and had an obvious preference to them than to Kwame Nkrumah and his CPP! 

 

Before the 2008 elections, even Akufo-Addo's own private pollsters predicted an Atta-Mills victory. The attempts to stem the tide with the Rawlings' Hitlist hoax only worsened matters, as President Mills emerged not only victorious but also to be “his own man”. On the other hand, Akufo-Addo's popularity, insufficient as it was in 2008, has been on the wane, as a result of reckless statements and a series of drug-related scandals and allegations. 

 

As though that were not enough, his own lieutenants are at each others' throats. Herbert Krapa fights Otchere-Darko, Okoampa fights Ochere-Darko and Krapa, Otchere-darko fights Okoampa and Herbert Krapa. Even within the inner-circle of the so-called “Victory 2012 Campaign”, the constant strategic repositioning and jostling for power and attention has led to a complete breakdown of teamwork. It is even worse with the NPP as a party. Today, despite the obvious low-profile, the “Agenda 2016” is almost becoming a household word. The funniest thing about Okoampa-Ahoofe is that he even helped in putting words to the fundamental logic that has now developed into the full-blown “Agenda 2016”:

"...the fact that the timing of his premiership had far more to do with the widely perceived success of the suggested candidate than either his own proven managerial skills or his perceived ability to readily reach out to his internal political opponents..." - Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame. See: NPP Needs Functional structures and statesmen, not self-centered politicians, Ghanaweb, Feature Article of Thursday, 11 February 2010, Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame.

I take the contrary position. It is rather not only Akufo-Addo's “perceived inability to readily reach out to his internal political opponents”, coupled with “the timing of his [President Mills] premiership”, but also his inability to effectively respond to the allegations of substance abuse, perceived arrogance, a repetitive and intrusive sense of ideological and moral bankruptcy that exude from his discourses, that make Akufo-Addo the under-dog in this race in which President Mills is clearly the front-runner. It is therefore a ridiculously disingenuous mischief to begin to cry foul even before the vote as to call for bloodshed. I shall be discussing this in detail later on, but first, let's go back to the quotation from Okoampa above, and try to come to terms with it.

What Okoampa is saying in simple English, is that President Mills defeated Akufo-Addo, or the NDC defeated the NPP simply because the NPP had been in power for eight years, and Ghanaians were tired of them and wanted change. For Okoampa, it had nothing to do with any innate ability of Candidate Mills who won, because it was all a matter of timing! And I think he is statistically correct. An NPP candidate who contests an NDC President after the eight-year term had expired, stands better chances of winning against an NDC candidate, and vice versa, as we saw after the end of the Rawlings' eight year term that ushered in President John Agyekum Kufour of the NPP. The same can be said of the eight year term of NPP President Kufour, that ushered in the NDC President Mills.

You would all recall the grievances we heard from strategic NPP power brokers in the Ashanti Region, which included well-connected candidates vying for powerful seats in the party, such as National Chairman, National Secretary, etc., who did not only feel aggrieved for having been cheated in the elections, but also felt aggrieved as regards the manner the party handled their grievances. Add to that melting pot, a shrewd and calculating Mr. Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, also from the Ashanti Region, who must have thought of such dazzling arithmetic of timing, long before the implications of that, in terms of the internal politics of the NPP, dawned upon Okoampa-Ahoofe.

Add to that, Okoampa's own incessant attacks on President Kufour, which I described as “a state of cognitive dissonance” in an article on that subject when out of the blue Okoampa came to the defence of President Kufour over the Gizelle Yajzi scandal:

“Are we now seeing in full display the long-awaited problem of THE CONGNITIVE DISSONANCE OF THE AKYEM MAFIA? I know Kufuor is now like "Asantrofi Anoma" to you people, and you people are yet to make up your minds whether to like him or hate him! The problem is you would want to use his records to win votes, but at the same time you want to distance yourselves from the numerous scandals! Now, all of a sudden you appear to put a brave face on it because of the obvious repercussions on the integrity of Mr. Akufo-Addo, who may have to position himself on this scandal if it continues to grow. An uncomfortable situation indeed, so by all means Kufour has to be innocent!” See: Gizelle Yajzi/Yadzi: Prikus Kufuorus Non Conscientum Habet! Feature Article of Wednesday, 25 August 2010, by Mensah, Nana Akyea.

Why so? Because, not long before this Okoampa had been on the back of President Kufour at the slightest pretext. It became so serious that I am sure many people tried to talk to him through various channels. For instance he complains that Otchere-Darko has forbidden him not to criticize a certain political enemy of Nana Akufo-Addo. He also reacts angrily to a wise counsel by Peter Owusu Boahene, in a rejoinder to Okampa's article, “Kufuor continues to campaign for Atta-Mills", to tone down his attacks on President Kufour and to plead for both Akyems and Ashantis to come together for the sake of Nana Addo, whom Okoampa also happens to support. The response from Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr. to this appeal should explain to any doubting Thomases anywhere whether or not the Ashanti-Akyem divide in the NPP is a hoax as they say. 

Under the title, "Comment: Did I Impress Your wife?" Okoampa charged:

"Man, are you good at spewing crap! All of a sudden, it is the fault of Owusu-Akyem Tenten Nana Kwame Okoampa-Agyeman! That I served as Local Government secretary under Rawlings when the judges you so much cared about went missing.

Yes, the Akyem-Mafia killed the judges!

Barima, ask those who went to secondary school with me: I was editing "The Mountaineer" when Kufuor was a Kwaku Baah lieutenant and B. B. Ofori was my genius Geography tutor!

In 1932, when the real Asante-Mafia ran my maternal grandfather, Rev. T. H. Sintim out of the Adum section of Kumasi and off his job as the first native-Ghanaian headteacher, for being criminally culpable of Akyem descent and heritage, as Justice Sarpong put it rather mildly a few days ago, Nana Yawbe Sintim-Aboagye was "acting high and mighty," as the expression is the exclusive behavioral preserve of Akyemfo.

Don't talk about Dr. Richard Anane now: I saw and read your large corpus of protest literature on Ghanaweb. Rather, let's talk about Mr. Osafo Maafo. Oh, no, no, no.... Why? Because he is only an
Akyem-Kotoku bastard!

My friend, where were you when the Ejisu-Piranhas ran me out of NPP-USA because I had dared to call Uncle Kofi Diawuo his real name?

And where were you when my own father, the founding-libator of the Amansie Society of New York was banished because one of your royal Asante-Angels suddenly discovered that his tabooed Akyem identity was stalling the progress of the organization?

My friend, you are lucky you are spewing such guff tens of miles away; else, I would strangle you and face execution by lethal injection!" - Author: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Date: 2010-08-12 23:48:31 (See: Comment to: "RE: “Kufuor continues to campaign for Atta-Mills" Feature Article of Friday, 13 August 2010, by Columnist: Boahene, Peter Owusu).

A similar scene was repeated the first time Asamoah Boateng attempted to pay a visit to the Akufo-Addo Victory 2012 office in Accra. This time he was not called an Ejisu piranha. Asmaoh Boateng, everybody knows hails from Mankesim in the Central Region, yet they screamed “Agenda 2016!” Here is a story that speaks for itself:

“The New Patriotic Party (NPP), even in opposition, is a house divided against itself where factionalism has taken over sense of strategic reasoning DAYBREAK has gathered. 

Reports say some key persons who campaigned for Alan Kyerematen are not been tolerated at the Ridge campaign office of Nana Akufo Addo on suspicion that they have a 2016 agenda rather than a 2012 agenda.

So nasty is the development that former Information Minister, Stephen Asamoah Boateng, who supported the Alan Kyerematen flag-bearer bid, was recently booed, insulted and hooted at the front gate of the Nima residence of Nana Akufo Addo by some of his security details at the entrance.

Not only did they rain insults on Asamaoh Boateng but he was warned to leave the place and never return if he does not want to suffer a broken jaw. Some journalists who witnessed the nasty scene feared that the former Minister would be assaulted and they went to his rescue until an aide of Nana Addo intervened and whisked Asabee into the compound. The attackers were not even given a verbal rebuke.” (See: “Nana Addo Snubs Alan Boys” Ghanaweb, General News of Thursday, 30 September 2010, Source: DAYBREAK)

My point about the wailers is that these are the very same people who will wail the most, when the results turn out to confirm their stupidities! I would go as far as to say that apart from the cocaine scandal and marijuana fumes “first thing in the morning!”, which have completely shattered any chances of breaking through the competitive nature of Ghana's elections, the “Agenda '16” is yet another formidable challenge capable of delivering a deadly defeat to his presidential ambitions. At this juncture, one may ask, “What is Agenda 2016?” and it shall be treated as a genuine question. I shall try and give some insight into that question in this “dufument”.

This is my first major “dufument” of Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., as we approach the 2012 electoral year, and he begins to churn out more nonsense, and playing the drum major in the drums of war in Ghana we shall have the time to explain that Nana Akufo-Addo chances of winning any elections were even brighter in 2008 than they are today. Independent predictions like UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit is predicting a slim victory for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), if the 2012 general elections were held today. This has sent the signals to the business community, effectively enhancing the authority and prestige of the man to deal with in the foreseeable future as far as Ghana is concerned. 

This impression that President Mills is no lame duck administration probably explains some of the international curtsies and diplomatic strength the Mills Administration is enjoying currently. I was not surprised at the speed with which the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) unanimously endorsed a limit of US$3.4 billion on non-concessional borrowing for Ghana, just as an example, to the utter shock and chagrin of Otchere-Darko and his friends, including Akufo-Addo. It is against this background that I wish to wonder aloud, just what does Akufo-Addo mean by all-die-be-die because, somehow, someone is determined to rig the elections to deny him of victory? Who born dog? Who dash frog coat? 

You are even more unpopular than you were in 2008 when you lost. President Mills has even become more popular when it became apparent that he was not going to be a “poodle of Rawlings” as the Akufo-Addo camp had falsely predicted. He has the advantage of incumbency. He has a sounder academic background, and has displayed sound judgement in resisting Ghana being compelled into war with La Cote d'Ivoire, as Akufo-Addo and Okoampa and co stupidly insisted. 

Akufo-Addo was not surprised that he lost the 2008 Presidential elections. He had already been warned about it by Professor Larry Gibson in advance! Yet he was able to pretend that he could have won if his "numerous" supporters in the Volta Region had been allowed to vote! I think there is no need to wait for Akufo-Addo to lose to find out whether or not he is going to accept the results. I think he is automatically going to cry foul, even though his chances this time are even slimmer than the last time around!

From their own admissions, the Akufo-Addo campaign is not going well at all. In his recent article, Gabby Asare, the author, who is also the Executive Director of the Akufo-Addo PR-team known as "the Danquah Institute" admits that the NDC deserves "some credit for even succeeding in putting the opposition on the defensive much of the time." See: "Negative Campaign In Ghana And Lessons From .....", Feature Article of Saturday, 8 October 2011, Otchere-Darko. So, how can a relatively unpopular candidate, doomed to lose to the incumbent, blame his obvious unpopularity and inevitable defeat to cheating? That is the million-dollar question!

Akufo-Addo's problems with the crucial Ashanti vote which can make or break is far from resolved. Apparently the "Agenda 2016" Team led by Kufour and Allan Cash is even more optimistic and better organized than the "Victory 2012" in the Ashanti Region. It is the group which controls the Ashanti Region that will decide the winner, and all the indications are that they do. And these are people who have their own agenda, “affectionately” called “Agenda 16” by Nana Akufo-Addo and the wailers.

Indeed, the only way Akufo-Addo can hope to win the election is through rigging, but there are even internal forces within the NPP which would sabotage that for the sake of the “Agenda 2016” so what is he talking about? Is it another way of preparing the grounds in order to refuse to concede his inevitable defeat as he did in 2008, after his so-called “one-touch” victory campaign? The only reason why he keeps shouting “all-die-be-die” is simply because he was overwhelmed by the scandal of drug abuse and enjoyed the distractions that this particular stupidity generated: “We Akans are not cowards!” Apart from counting on mercenaries who intend to be paid with our oil money, Akufo-Addo cannot even garner enough support to wage war on the will of the people and on our democracy!

Keep building your statues of snow, but wail not, and behave like adults when you see them melting! At the end of the day the NPP has more to lose from the "Agenda 2016" menace than the NDC has to lose from the Rawlingses threat. The percentage of constituency under Alan Cash's command is far greater than the percentage as demonstrated in their respective congresses where "President John Mills won the NDC's National Delegates' Congress in Sunyani by a whooping 96.09% as against Nana Konadu's 3.01%", whilst Nana Akufo-Addo obtained 78.89 per cent in his own party. Mr John Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen polled 21,226 votes representing about 19.91 per cent. The dynamics do not bode well for the NPP, also because there is a frontal and direct contradiction between the Alan Cash "Agenda 2016" and the Akufo-Addo "Victory 2012".

"A wolf may eat a sheep now and then,
But thousands are killed by men,
An open foe may prove a curse,
But a pretended friend is worse"!

The NDC now has the "open foe" under control, but can the NPP say the same thing about their "pretended friends"? Whilst the Rawlingses are already talking of forming another political party, with preferably, the NDC logo, Akufo-Addo recently included Alan Kyeremanten in his campaign team, despite the visceral hatred of the Alan Cash "Agenda 2016" underground commandos. Alan Cash believes strongly that 2016 is his time, given to him by God himself. The Akufo-Addo "Victory 2012" is a threat to this "God-given" hope of Alan Cash, as Akufo-Addo could extend his political expiring date beyond 2012 to two terms ending in 2020, and making nonsense of the "Agenda 2016"!

Attention! There is a good reason why this is not in the public domain. This shall never be an operation that will be played out in the open. Both sides have come to the selfish conclusion that they need a strong façade of unity, whether 2012 or 2016, if they are to make any impact. Thus publicly they are friends! They have agreed to disagree. They tell each other, "if you are pretending to be a friend, we shall also pretend to be friends!" This is a house irrevocably divided against each other as the Ashanti Region is the strongest base of the party, the "Agenda 2016" which needs a defeat of Akufo-Addo, to spring into action, gives the NDC a fortuitous advantage even if the Rawlingses were to break away from the NDC.

As you can see, the title is a bit misleading for those who were expecting me to talk of “the wiki-weed problem” rather than Okoampa. That shall come later. I just want to emphasise the fact that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe is just a tip of an iceberg. The only person who can do something about this problem is the stolid and indolent Akufo-Addo, who is quick to bring to order, the non-Akyem members of the party who fall out of line, such as the recent rebuke of the Honourable P.C. Ofori-Appiah over his remarks on Alan Kyeremanten. Even though several voices have been raised in the past and continue to be raised by both NPP sympathisers and opponents alike, Mr. Akufo-Addo has remained strangely silent when it comes to calling his Akyem cousins to order! 

Whom is he deceiving other than his own bloody-self as more and more NPP sympathisers begin to feel frustrated and pissed off by this sinful silence? This is a call for the first non-tribal political election campaign in our history, and it will pay a lot if Akufo-Addo saw the light and started his own anti-tribal campaign of his own and call some of his lieutenants like Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., to order! It would be a very small thing in itself, but certainly a good beginning. After all, as Kwame Nkrumah puts it, even though Rome was not built in a day, the building of Rome was started in a day This, Nana Akufo-Addo can do by first withdrawing the obnoxious statement, “We Akans are not cowards!” Otherwise, don't wail blaming “Antwi” when the inevitable happens!

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"To all men of goodwill, organize, organize, organize! The struggle is
far from over! We prefer self-government in danger, to servitude in tranquillity!

Forward ever, backward never"!

Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

Ochere-Darko Must Render Proper Apologies For “Stupid” Insults! Part II

Ochere-Darko Must Render Proper Apologies For “Stupid” Insults! Part II

Feature Article,

By Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

There is no doubt that Mr. Ochere-Darko is feeling the heat and the fallouts of his extremely embarrassing behaviour. He has gone into damage control mode, short of doing the right thing. He even seems to be ready to tell any lie, rather than to apologize for the obvious misbehaviour in public. And he makes a mess of those lies too, just as he made a mess of the charge that J.B. Danquah was a CIA agent. He lied to defend Danquah, and he is lying to defend himself! A good reason why the current apologies of Ochere-Darko are unacceptable is simply because he even lies about the fact that he did not insult Dr. Omane Boamah, whilst we all see and hear Ochere-Darko clearly asking, “Why is he so stupid?”, amid the staccato of “stupidity,” and “stupid” per second, “Would you stop this stupidity? Why is he so stupid? You are sitting here and accusing somebody of being a CIA agent, what sort of stupidity is that? What is this stupidity?” Gabby never explained why it is wrong to accuse "somebody of being a CIA agent"!

Even though we all hear Ochere-Darko insulting Dr. Omane Boamah is so stupid that he is even finding it difficult to fathom the reason why, he is still claiming that is not supposed to be taken as an insult! He still refuses to do the right thing and to apologize. He is growing more and more disgusting with each passing day without those apologies! Gabby Otchere Darko still maintains that stands by what he said even though he believes his choice of word was a bit harsh. He even denies the insult! For once, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe got it right. He described Ochere-Darko's behaviour as a “rather startlingly infantile reaction”! Coming from no less a person than the last remaining apostle of Dr. J. B. Danquah, a politically endangered species, Kwame Okoampa himself, this is serious. From the look of things, it even seems Okoampa-Ahoofe would have behaved better than Gabby! So, where is Gabby's defence? One would have thought that Gabby was a little less arrogant and sober of the two!

The strange “gift” Ochere-Darko appears to be endowed with, is his ability to lie about the obvious. I never stop to wonder why this man is constantly behaving as though he has the monopoly over the truth. After the ridiculous defence of Danquah's CIA past, and surreptitious attempts to replace “the American embassy” with “the CIA” which is published in a book widely in circulation, Gabby is again lying about a live radio and TV event watched by millions and of which the records are still freely available! He first lies publicly about the contents of a book that is no secret, then lies about his own public statements! Speaking recently said on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday September 26, when he was again asked by the host, this time, Mr. Bernard Avle, whether he was ready to apologise to the deputy Minister, Gabby's answer was startling:

“I did not say that the man is stupid. I thought that the man insulted the memory of J. B Danquah when he reduced everything that J. B Danquah did for Ghana particularly from 1923 to when he died in prison in 1965 as betrayer of the Nationalist project and reduced him to being a CIA agent. I thought that was most insulting and I told him that such a statement was irresponsible and I used the word stupid and I still stand by what I meant to say”. See: , Gabby: I Won't Apologise To The Deputy Minister, Date: 26-Sep-2011, Source: Citifmonline.com.

Please Watch Video: “Gabby walks off Newsfile after 'stupid' insult Politics.flv,” and check it for yourself!

Perhaps, Gabby should have ridiculously said, “I did not say 'that the man is stupid', I only asked 'Why is he so stupid?'” That would be contradictory and illogical, but at least he would have perhaps been closer to what happened and his own regrets about it, and of course, the understandable need to lie about it all! After wondering aloud the fact that he was already looking for reasons why Dr. Omane Boamah was not just stupid, but “so stupid”, he even denies insulting him! Who said, “Why is he so stupid?” Is that not an insult? Hah? Gabby?

Is Gabby going to come and tell me that my feature article, “J. B. Danquah Was A CIA Asset!” is also “stupidity, nothing but stupidity! This is pure stupidity!”? Is that how to conduct “an intellectual discussion”? Or is it Okoampa who is going to bell the cat? Is it not strange that not a single disciple of Danquah has stepped forward in his defence since the publication of this article? Gabby was reported in the news as saying: “Gabby Otchere Darko added that intellectual discussions should not involve people like Dr. Omane Boamah.” I think it is about time that our media took a cue from Gabby's own words, except that the one to exclude ought not to be Dr. Omane Boamah, who was simply stating a fact, but the arrogant and insulting Ochere-Darko himself!

Gabby was reminded to use decent language, but he couldn't be bothered. He did not only repeat the insult, but he hits Dr. Omane Boamah. In answer to Dr. Omane Boamah's protestation, “You are even hitting me”, Gabby could not be bothered. He only responds, “No, what sort of stupidity is that?” He does not even excuse the physical aggression! No self-respecting studio will allow this guy to pass through their doors for any such event in the future! On the contrary, he probably offers an explanation for hitting a fellow panellist: “No, what sort of stupidity is that?” Calls by Dr. Omane Boamah to Ochere-Darko reminding him to ”Use decent language,” went unheeded.

The ball is now squarely in court of the producer of the programme, and the Ghanaian media in general to come out and pronounce on the behaviour of Mr. Gabriel Asare Ochere-Darko. For those who do not know the background to this story, it is very simple. Discussing the third celebration of the Founder’s day marked on Wednesday September 21, deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Omane Boamah described Dr. J. B. Danquah, after whom the Danquah Institute is named, as a CIA agent. Dr. Omane Boamah’s description of the Dr. J. B Danquah as a CIA agent immediately got Gabby Ochere-Darko insulting the deputy Minister.

“Would you stop this stupidity? Would you stop this stupidity? Why is he so stupid? You are sitting here and accusing somebody of being a CIA agent, what sort of stupidity is that? What is this stupidity? This is stupidity…you consider a founder of Ghana as a CIA agent, what sort of stupidity is this? ...this is pure stupidity.”

Gabby Otchere Darko was then asked by the host of the show to apologize to listeners and Dr. Omane Boamah for the insulting language but Gabby would only apologize to listeners. He stubbornly refused to apologize to the deputy Minister. He rather chose the option of walking out of the studio than to apologize for the insults. He was subsequently asked to leave the studios for his refusal to apologize to Omane Boamah, since that was the rule. Gabby Otchere Darko accepted the option of not apologizing and walking out to apologize and stay, and walked off the live program stating:

“When you want us to have an intellectual programme like this, you don’t bring people like this. I am not going to apologise, I can apologise to the viewers and listeners but not him. He insults J.B. Danquah and you want me to apologise to him? …I am not going to do that. Why should I do that? … If that is what you want I will walk out on your programme, I won’t do it!”

One tactic adopted by the Danquah camp is an attempt to intimidate the press, especially the host of the programme. The host was fantastic. If anything at all, he was wrong for allowing Ochere-Darko to sit in whilst no apologies to Dr. Omane Boamah was forth-coming. Unsurprisingly, most of the Danquah fundamentalists have since not only leaped to the defence of Ochere-Darko, but they are blaming everybody else except the culprit. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., for example puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the host of the programme:

“Personally, I feel that the host of the Newsfile program, if he already has no quick fact-checking research assistants, ought to be promptly provided with the same. For, in the cyber-tech culture of the twenty-first century, it is rather primitive for the host of any high-wire political program to let rhetorically uncouth and incontinently mendacious operatives like Dr. Omane-Boamah to literally get away with murder.” See: “Omane-Boamah Deserved that Bit of It”, Feature Article of Friday, 30 September 2011, by Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I don't understand why some people think our media can be bullied so easily, but they must be fooling themselves. We shall never allow this to happen to our media because it is is the backbone of our democracy. I have confirmed those allegations in a feature article already. So, for his answer, I refer Kwame Okoampa to read: “J. B. Danquah Was A CIA Asset!”, Feature Article of Saturday, 1 October 2011, Columnist: Mensah, Nana Akyea, and leave “the host of the Newsfile program” in peace! If Okoampa has any sensible contribution to make to this debate, I openly invite him to respond to this article! As for Gabby, he must be made to retract his words. Why should he be allowed into such programmes again after refusing to apologize to Dr. Omane Boamah, saying, “I am not going to do that. Why should I do that? … If that is what you want I will walk out on your programme, I won’t do it!”

Gabby must be made to do it. I think that it is very important for our media to immediately place a “cordon sanitaire” (hygienic barrier) around this person and the Danquah Institute, until he does what he is supposed to do. If he refuses to listen to the media, the media has an obligation not to listen to him. This is not very complicated. Dr. Omane Boamah cites a book to make the allegation that Dr. J. B. Danquah was a CIA agent. The evidence collaborates what the records say of his arrest and detention. So what is it that makes Dr. Omane Boamah “so stupid”? And, by the way, shouldn't Gabby also apologize for all these publicly verifiable lies if he wants to restore the credibility of the Danquah Institute?

Gabriel Asare Ochere-Darko is a long story to tell. Thus it is a pleasure to see him stubbornly refusing to apologize as quickly as possible, so that the long story I have been yearning to tell can be told. I shall bring out many uncomfortable facts of public interest as a way of piling pressure on him to do the right thing. I shall be focusing soon on Ochere-Darko and the canvassing for US military bases in Ghana, and how this connects with the Danquah tradition. It is OK if Gabby does not feel like apologizing for this “stupidity”. By the time I am through with him Ghanaians will be asking his boss, Mr. Akufo-Addo himself, to tell us all what he knows about secret plans by the NPP to establish a US military base in Ghana, and stop running away from the question!

Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!!
Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro,
Member, Pan-Africanist International

-a grammar of Pan-Africanism and its manners of articulation!

http://www.panafricanistinternational.org

*(also known to Kwame Okoampa, the notorious assassin of character, as: "Ali Masmadi Sasabonsam Jehu Shoaboni Appiah, who now presumptuously and conveniently goes by the name of Nana Akyea-Mensah, the name of a historic man the likes of whose dignity and ineffable cynosure that SOB would never encounter among the male members of his largely pathologically skirt-chasing and pedophiliac family." See: A Typical Ghanaian Prophet, Feature Article | Thu, 21 Jul 2011, by Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.)

 

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