Ken Agyapong: 'You Stinking Pepeni'

By Larry-Alan Dogbey

With Nana Akufo Addo’s ethnocentric guff s refusing to die, hours of listening to hot verbal exchanges between Alhaji Iddrisu Bature and Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, revealed another ethnocentric insult from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Assin North.

The insult is most likely to cost the MP and media owner from the Central Region dearly, even in death, just like the late mentor and political godfather of ex-President John Kufuor, Mr. Victor Owusu, who on June 17, 1970, described Ewes as “a tribe notorious for its inward-looking tribalism.”

Mr. Victor Owusu, sometime in his political career, had to slaughter cows to pacify the people of Volta Region over the ethnocentric comments before he was allowed to campaign in the region for an election he eventually lost narrowly to Dr. Hillar Limann, in 1979.

In the course of the hot exchanges which took place on the Nima-based Asempa FM, the MP mentioned the word “Pepeni”, a derogatory term used for people of Northern extraction, before saying that Alhaji Bature has body odour, foul month and was “a motherfucker. A better person like me, you compare yourself to me? You’re nobody, you’re nobody. You don’t even know how to clean your anus after you’ve been to toilet.”

“Pepeni” is sometimes also used to mean a Muslim, but its use to imply a Northerner is more pronounced and pervasive.

Agyapong went on: “Bature, you are a fool, ‘Jimini’ like that. He doesn’t know me. He is a band boy. ‘Kwasiea, mboasem kwasiakwa’. I challenge, lets meet. I will first kill you.

I will kill you first. A watchman’s son. I will face you. If you’re a man let’s meet. Stupid fool. Villager”

The Police administration, true its word, has written to the Speaker of Parliament, Mrs. Joyce Bamford-Addo, to release the MP to face investigations into the death threat he issued against Alhaji Bature.

Sources say that the letter was sent to Parliament on Monday and that the Police administration intends to make a follow-up on the letter next Monday.

Yesterday, Mr. Dominic Kissi-Yeboah, the producer of Asempa FM’s talk show, spent about 30 minutes with the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) where he was questioned on what transpired last week Friday.

He was made to write a statement, and released to go. He told The Herald that his interaction with the officers was cordial and that the two officers were “very very nice” to him. He gave the name of the officers as DSP Willie.

He told the paper that he attended the meeting with the Human Resource Manager of the Multi Media Group, Nana Elegba.

In his rumbling which sounded nonsensical, Mr. Agyapong said Alhaji Bature had cracked heels, body odour and foul mouth and was “a motherfucker,” Bature; you are a fool, ‘Jimini’ like that. He doesn’t know me. He is a band boy. ‘Kwasiea, mboasem kwasiakwa’ I challenge, lets meet, I will first kill you. I will kill you first. A watchman’s son.” I will face you. If you’re a man let’s meet. Stupid fool.”

Mr. Agyepong, unable to hold Alhaji Bature, to substantiate his claim that he (Agyepong) is a drug baron while his sister Betty Agyapong is a drug baroness, went into frenzy, pouring fire and brainstorm on Alhaji Bature, who also is the managing editor of Bilingual Free Press newspaper.

Not satisfied with insults such as “motherfucker”, “asshole”, “stinking body”, “bad breath”, “cracked heels”, “stupid fool”, “shepherd boy”, “villager”, “watchman’s son, animal; you’re an animal” and others, Mr. Agyapong could not miss adding “Pepeni.”

The NPP, coincidentally prides as coming from the stock of educated elites who fought for equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all citizens. However, the present day followers of the party are suffering from the misfortune that befell their forefathers.

Recently, Collins P. Appiah-Ofori, NPP MP for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa, launched a verbal onslaught on the chief and elders of Cape Coast for not according his party’s presidential candidate, Nana Addo, during last year’s Fetu Afahye celebration of the people of Ogua Traditional Area. The MP, among other things, called the chief unprintable names.

At a meeting in the Eastern Regional capital, Koforidua, where he met with some members of the NPP as part of his nationwide tour with some of the national executives, Nana Addo, in reference to other tribes ranted:

“They say we Akans are timid and cowards so when one or two of us is overawed, we all recoil, well, we will see!”

There have been many instances, where the ethnocentric comments have taken center stage of political discourse.

Also recently, when the Ghana Statistical Service failed the announce the 2010 Population and Housing Census, the General Secretary of the NPP, John Owusu-Afriyie, publicly declared that the NDC government was manipulating with the number of persons residing in the Volta Region, to bloat it so as to neutralize the huge number of people from the Ashanti Region, a stronghold of the NPP, for electoral purposes come 2012.

During the 2008 Presidential election, Mr. Atta Akyea, was heard on an audio recording saying that if the NPP could produce a corpse to show to the Electoral Commission (EC), as a confirmation of an NPP polling agent who was killed in the Volta Region, the results could be nullified.

In the case of Mr. Victor Owusu, Dr. G. K Agama, who died sometime last year, had condemned the dismissal of some 568 public servants by the Dr. Kofi Abrefa Abuasi regime in what became known as Apollo 568.

People of the Danquah-Busia group who are mainly Akans have a long tradition of always seeing themselves as superior to other tribes in this country.

As far back as 1970, the late Victor Owusu, a strong Danquah-Busia traditionalist the Minister of External Affairs, shook the very foundation of this country and the Parliament House when he made a very uncomplimentary remark about the people of the Volta Region over a simple national issue.

He was responding to a Private Member’s motion moved by the late Dr. G.K Agamah, who was then Leader of the Opposition. Dr. Agama, a nationalist, was very disturbed about the late Dr. Busia’s dismissal of public servants who were mainly of Ewe extraction.

The issue generated the “Salla Case” in which the late Mr. E.K Salla, former GNTC manager, took the government to court for wrongful dismissal, leading to Dr. Busia’s notorious “No court, No court” declaration.

Dr. Agama’s motion simply sought that, “this House diplores the government’s unconstitutional dismissal of a large number of public servants and views it as an abuse of trust”.

Victor Owusu then shot on his feet to defend Busia’s action, describing Dr. Agama’s motion as mud-slinging and that Dr. Agama “moved a motion which one finds difficult to follow”

Then he dropped the bombshell: “Dr. Agamah himself belongs to a tribe that has been notorious for its inward-looking tribalism”. This outrageous comment generated uproar in the House and eventually enveloped the whole nation, damaging the cordial tribal unity.

The General Secretary of the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL) and Member of Parliament (MP) for Tamale, Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, on a point of order, described the issue as “a very serious matter”. And just as he was about to underscore the mischief behind Victor Owusu’s statement, the Majority in the House prevented him with an uproar.

Members of the House denounced Victor Owusu’s statement, saying that the word Dr. Agama used was “tribal” and not “tribalistic”, calling Victor Owusu’s statement as “misleading”. They said Dr. Agama never used the word “tribalistic”.

Mr. Sam Okudzeto (NAL), MP for North Tongu, hit the nail right on the head when he told the House by referring to eminent historian by name Charles Beard, who said:

“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power”

He continued: “The exhibition by the Minister of External Affairs shows clearly the madness of power. The Minister of External Affairs has been noted for always going to the side of power. When the CPP ”. Then the majority interrupted.

Since then, the debate over that statement has continued until today. And one would have thought that forty-one years on, members of the Danquah-Busia tradition would have tried to heal the wounds of the nation by being decorous in their language and thereby learning from the past.

And so the seeds of tribalism in Ghanaian politics, sowed by the late Victor Owusu, still linger on after his death.

Apart from Mr. Okudjeto, Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, then MP for Biakoye, R.T. Seglah and Dziwonu Mensah were among the people captured in that day’s proceedings of the National Assembly of that day as persons who put up a fierce opposition to Mr. Victor Owusu’s derogatory comments.