Feature Article, by Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

A rejoinder to: 'NDC Dunderheads, Atta Mess "Threatened" Kenya On Ghana', Columnist: Sarpong, Justice, Feature Article of Sunday, 13 February 2011.

*Introduction*

Akufo-Addo must be made to substantiate the dangerous statement that some one had told him that:

*"We Akans are cowards. They argue that if one is able wound one or two of us, then all the rest of us remaining take to our heels!" *

- Mr William Kofi Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo,

Presidential Candidate of the Akan Branch of the New Patriotic Party

If he cannot do this, then it means he is a genuine fool. And if the fool is too arrogant to withdraw the offending statement, he must be made to do so by the Supreme Court, headed by Ataa Akyea's in-law! I am curious to know how the court would rule over this case! "Frivolous"? "True, Akans are cowards"? "Akufo-Addo's statement is not belligerent and ethnocentric"?

Anyway, we shall have time to talk more about this in subsequent updates. I have been strongly encouraged by the response to the part one of this article that I decided to write the sequel immediately! How could you not be possibly happy if you manage to write a rejoinder to the Akufo-Addo press guru which elicits only ten comments, half of them mine, and by the time of going to the press, we have seventy six comments under the rejoinder?

The reason why I am writing this is because I was very pleasantly surprised to see a lot of NPP supporters having the nerve to pass comments against my article. What normally happens is that when the punches are too strong, they pretend they have not seen it! Okoampa even went as far as writing that he had no time to read a cut and paste article and credit it with a rejoinder! The only trouble was that he had to read the article carefully and know the sections I lifted from the Danquah Institute website, where I copied my information on Danquah, before determining that there was some "cut and paste"!

They are so ridiculous. I was amused to read Akadu Mansema having nothing sensible to write other than commenting on spelling mistakes! Mistakes that were not even in the article but I comment I made in the Ghanaweb forum eleven months ago! They did not even bother to hide the date! "Author: Nana Akyea Mensah, the Odikro, Date: 2009-05-02 12:42:34" My article was published as a Feature Article on Ghanaweb on Monday, 21 March 2011! Please see: 'Akufo-Addo: "We Akans Are Not Cowards..."' by Columnist: Mensah, Nana Akyea

I just want the reader to make up his or her own mind, whether the two statements are the same:

*Akufo-Addo's take:*

"They have made up their minds that they are going to intimidate us in 2012." Akufo-Addo was caught on the microphone, speaking in Twi, an Akan language, 'I sometimes explain this as the claim that we Akans are cowards. They argue that if one is able wound one or two of us, then all the rest of us remaining take to our heels! Is that so? Well, We shall see! Atiwa for example, was a little illustration of this. During the by-elections at Atiwa we did "something small" that showed a little bit of this. And so we have to understand that this party was formed by brave men. Our elders who formed this party which is now the biggest political party in Ghana, were not people who were hiding under beds! The courage that is needed now to face the 2012 elections is 'All die be die! All die be die!' Nobody is a man more than his fellow! Nobody more manly than the other. No matter how tall you are, no matter how small you are in size, by God's plan, all of us are endowed with exactly the same thing. You cannot tell us that you have three inside yours. All of us have how many? Two! Ha! ha! ha! So we are going to pick up courage. Ghanaians need us to come back to power. Whatever courage we need to stand firmly and to ensure that we come back to power in 2012, we are going to have to do it!" (Transcription by the Office of the Odikro, from audio, source: @joyonlinenews: Listen to key voices on Nana Akufo-Addo's 'all die be die' http://dlvr.it/Gb2v7)

*Candidate Atta-Mills' take:*

“I want to repeat with all the force at my command, the warning note that I sounded last year (2007) that should there be another attempt by the ruling or any other party at the December elections to steal the verdict of the people the National Democratic Congress and all fair minded Ghanaians will categorically reject out of hand the fraudulent results so proclaimed and will adopt all legitimate means, to seek redress to any such political misconduct. The NDC would therefore like to assure every Ghanaian that it will not allow the NPP in the coming elections to repeat such a disgraceful conduct as it did in 2004...It (NDC) therefore urges all Ghanaians and the international community to draw useful lessons from the on-going Kenyan conflict situation and the unacceptable conduct of elections held recently in other African countries with a view to ensuring that they are not replicated in our dear country at the next general elections.

We wish to take this opportunity to warn also against the kind of pre-election violence that has taken place in Pakistan with the unfortunate assassination of Benazir Bhutto and to urge the ruling NPP government to ensure the safety and security of Presidential and Parliamentary candidates as well as all citizens in the coming elections,” Akufo Addo’s Vision for Ghana is All Die Be Die!

Under a very brilliant Feature Article of Wednesday, 16 March 2011, bearing the same title and written by *Mr.* Charles Nkansah, Oyokoba had argued:

"This author here is one of those fools who pretend they do not understand anything. They uplift things from the context they are given and run away with it like a dog preceding its owner on the way out.

The NDC and Mills can twist all they can, what part of "Do not do any harm to the electoral process or else"...... do they not understand?

Has Mills forgotten he threatened to induce Kenya in Ghana if the 2008 elections did not go smoothly - free and fair - back in 2008? How is that different from Nana Addo's call?

You have been warned way in advance - Azaa President Mills; do the right thing and there will be no drop of blood on Ghana's soil, anything short of that, we shall show you what a courageous people that we are.

Restrain your thugs; the fan-fools that surround you and all shall be well. Do Not Trip on Us. It is as simple as that.

You can hump, you can pant, you can jump, you can huff, you can bark, and we don't give a damn to your rants. Do not disturb the bee nest and you won't get any stings. But All Die Will Be Die if you and your consorts misbehave and try to rig the elections. Do you copy? Good!!!!!!!" (See: Comment: RIG OR STEAL ELECTIONS, YOU DIE, Author: OYOKOBA, Date: 2011-03-16 02:22:14, Comment to: actions not words)

*Dr. G.K. Berko's Words To The Wise:*

"Oyokoba, it is clear that the Author is a Partisan anti-Akufo Addo and ant-NPP. So, we should not be surprised at some of the negative comments he made about Nana Akufo Addo.

But we should be realistic and face facts. Honesty is the best Policy, some say. As often as I have seen many of Nana's supporters come to his defense on the much besieged "All die be die" comment, hardly have I seen any of those defenders of Nana concede that the Akan versus non-Akan part of his comment was wrong or mispoken.

I very much appreciate your steadfastness in supporting Nana. But I expected you, of all people, to have come out with a more convincing defense than one that so blatantly copies the act of the others by not denouncing the Akan versus non-Akan part of that comment.

To many Ghanaians, it is not as much the "All die be die" brazen challenge as the Tribal instigation part of the comment that makes them view Nana as grossly Ethnically divisive. So, why wouldn't you, with all your admirable eloquence, come to the rescue with that little concession of erroneous terminology?

Most Ghanaians see that omission in your efforts to justify Nana's comment as a deliberate design to force the early push of that most worrisome Tribal part into oblivion. And they do not want to just brush that aside or under the carpet because that is what bothers them most about Nana. It is one of those things we would wish sheer silence could sneak into the archives of memory but fail to budge. So, why not boldly admit the error, even without a passionate mia culpa, and move on?

Additionally, two wrongs do not make a right. So, even if President Mills had once made a similar misguided comment, that does not justify Akufo Addo towing the same line. Most people would have embraced Nana more, had he proven to occupy a realm beyond that notch. He would have set himself apart from the chaff, so to speak. He would have displayed a more mature Statesmanship and exemplified a leadership that most Ghanaians crave for, now--one that unites us all as Ghanaians and seen to be ready to lead the Nation in a truly democratic manner, irrespective of our Ethnic diversity.

I have always wondered why Nana did not restrict his comments to the criminal behaviour of the NDC hooligans, even if he thought baring the teeth of a wounded Lion could scare the Hyenas off its back. You've got my drift. Nana could have used the Judicial System to ward off any future threats by these rogues. He is more suited to compelling the Judiciary do the right thing, in this case, getting the culprits to face the full might of the Law, than anyone else around, having been an experienced Legal guru and once an Attorney General.

To be candid with you, I have closely analysed Mills' Kenya tirade of his pre-Presidency campaign and Nana's Akan versus non-Akan comment and found out that as much as both comments were inappropriate, legally, Mill's statement seem to have more legal room to dodge what you and I instinctively believe he meant, than that of Nana's Tribal instigation.

You may be closer to Nana's Office than many of us, and might have been privy to his inner sanctum's intentions for delivering that comment. So, you could have known first-hand that Nana's real intention with that Tribal comment was not as it came out to look. But the Public would not know that. The comment, to many, is the 'other-side-of-the-coin' expectation of many Ghanaians, given the already rising Tribal suspicions among us. It just happens to be the much abhorred side of that coin.

You see, most people go by what they hear. In the Public domain, folks have little time to, instantaneously, dig into the background for hidden motives to properly place comments in their 'proper' shelves. People immediately take what they hear to append to what has been currently happening around them. That could give them a different set of motives they tend to ascribe to the Politician making that comment. When that is done, it becomes a yeoman's burden to change their perception on that comment. Almost no amount of spin could win back the majority on that view.

It is with this practical observation that I would have liked to see you and others more humbly concede the erroneous presentation of that Tribal comment. But, again and again, that crucial expectation goes unfulfilled. And the perceived damage keeps reaching farther and farther and deeper and deeper as Nana's Political foes exploit the gap.

I hope you would take a deep breath and pause to ponder over this further. We could remain stubbornly unmoved in our respective positions on this issue. But the electorate may be unforgiving. Long Live Ghana!!" (Author: G.K. Berko., Date: 2011-03-16 08:24:47, Comment to: RIG OR STEAL ELECTIONS, YOU DIE)

I shot back immediately:

"Thank you so much sir! "Nana's Political foes exploit the gap"? We have also warned him to mind the very same gap! We have had the occasion of raising the specific issue of a leader of a political party in Ghana who opens his mouth to say "We Akans are not cowards...all did be die!", as a part of a national presidential race!!!

It is strange that Oyokoba is being so deliberately mischievous. Even demonstrably less intelligent supporters of the NPP and Akufo-Addo have been wise enough to distance themselves from this patently ethnocentric bunkum. Justice Sarpong is one of such regularly silly supporters of the NPP, but even he had something refreshingly different to say, whilst making apologies for Akufo-Addo. This is a very serious thing for a leading politician to say and be allowed to get away with! There is some accountability and law and order in this country, No? There are thousands of NPP members, particularly the non-Akans, but not necessarily limited to the non-Akans only. For example a rabid and semi-illiterate and formerly ethnocentric NPP member, like most members of the NPP until he passed through my hands on Ghanaweb, had this to say, whilst defending Akufo-Addo:

"Let me make it crystal clear here that, I do not agree with the part of Nana's speech talking about the bravery of Akans and making it seem like NPP is an Akan party at war with the Ewe dominated NDC Party. Ghanaians are not going to war war with each other, we have come a long way in our democratic rebirth we will not resort to the Kenya or Ivory Coast examples but we will not allow any Party, either NPP or NDC to hijack any election in Ghana, that NDC should not try to rig the 2012 election. Rawlings peacefully handed over to Kuffour and he in turn did the same thing to Mills. We expect Mills or Nana Konadu Agyeman to concede defeat gracefully in 2012 when the tide turns against NDC. We do not need to use guns, arrows and bows to affirm the will of the people. Ghanaians are too enlightened and matured to resort to this kind of primitive [endevour]." See; *'NDC Dunderheads, Atta Mess "Threatened" Kenya On Ghana'*, Columnist: Sarpong, Justice, Feature Article of Sunday, 13 February 2011.

*Conclusion*

It is up to you, fellow countrymen and women, to make up your own minds. And please, no matter what you do, follow politicians with your own conscience. You do yourself and your neighbours a moral injury each time you follow blindly! God is watching you! If war breaks out and people begin to die, their blood will not be only on Akufo-Addo's hands, it will also be on your hands, if you could not stand up and counted!

Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!! Cheers!

*Forward Ever! Backwards Never!!!*

*Cheers!*