By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

As a content-oriented listener, the last thing on my mind during Tuesday night’s Institute for Economic Affairs-sponsored presidential debate in Tamale was the sartorial deportment, or wardrobes, of the candidates involved. I also felt strongly that the number of participants ought to have been pared down to the two major presidential contenders, namely, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Although I promptly confess to having missed the remarkable debating pyrotechnics of the proprietor-presidential candidate of the long-shot Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, a man whom I have mordantly carped on occasion for his oversized ego and apparent lack of team-player skills, I still greatly admire his undoubtedly endearing diplomatic demeanor, for the most part.

Yes, I am a content-oriented listener; and so I was quite peeved to hear Mr. Benjamin Akyena-Brentuo, the NDC Communications Team operative, carp Nana Akufo-Addo for supposedly being the worst-attired among the four presidential debaters in Tamale. But, of course, I was not the least bit surprised, being that Nana Akufo-Addo is the one candidate that NDC movers and shakers would rather not confront in the homestretch lead-up to Election 2012. Nevertheless, I thought that the notoriously uppity and rambunctious Mr. Akyena-Brentuo could have been at least honest enough to have promptly and humbly acknowledged that, indeed, Nana Akufo-Addo was the best-dressed candidate at the Tamale debate (See “NDC Guru: Mahama’s Appearance at IEA was too Casual” Ghanaweb.com 11/1/12).

The foregoing is no accident at all, because Nana Akufo-Addo was also the most internationally renowned and recognizable among the “Tamale Four,” having also extensively schooled and professionally practiced corporate law in such global metropolises as New York, London and Paris, whose French language the NPP drum-major is widely known to speak with a fluency that nearly rivals that of his near-native English tongue.

Personally, though, I feel that Mr. Akyena-Brentuo is rather too young and culturally inexperienced and globally woefully underexposed to presume to authoritatively remark on Akufo-Addo’s indisputably cosmopolitan wardrobe. Nonetheless, the NDC communications rookie hack was dead on target in clearly and poignantly recognizing the casual, sartorial impropriety and rascally demeanor of President Mahama. Even my own wife, a former dressmaker, was convinced that the president must have arrived at the venue of the IEA-sponsored debate from a night of rowdy wassailing, or raucous carousel, at the residence of one of his widely alleged platoons of paramours and concubines. The man simply looked too tired and rough-hewn and school-boyish than a transitional president earnestly seeking the mandate of the people on his own merit.

Indeed, Akufo-Addo was the best dressed of the “Tamale Four” because his Ghanaian-manufactured loose-fitting dinner shirt deftly meshed our African tradition with convenient modernity; it also poignantly reflected the NPP presidential candidate’s ethnic neutrality. His pastel-dark colored pants/trousers also proffered a deft and resplendent accent to his marine-blue (or turquoise) solid-cotton print.

Dr. Abu Sakara, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) candidate for president’s West African tunic, on the other hand, while unquestionably suitable for the occasion, nonetheless, offered a bitter and morbid throwback to an era in our country’s political history when “freedom” and “democracy” were tabooed. But, of course, it was Mr. Hassan Ayariga, the People’s National Convention (PNC) presidential candidate, who eerily, albeit perhaps inadvertently, reminded Ghanaians of our pathologically neocolonialist psychological orientation. I mean, the temperature in Tamale last Tuesday was in excess of 80-degrees Fahrenheit, and here we had the forty-something-year-old Mr. Ayariga apishly clad in an Armani-like burgundy-colored suit, if the color-coding of my laptop You tube screen wasn’t toying with my vision.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###