Opinions of Saturday, 5 March 2016

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Andrew Awuni, Akufo-Addo Did Not Kill Adams Mahama

Andrew Awuni, Akufo-Addo Did Not Kill Adams Mahama, The Afoko Brothers Did!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 3, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Mr. Andrew Awuni’s dastardly attempt to blame Nana Akufo-Addo for the possibility of the New Patriotic Party’s failing to clinch victory in the November general election is all too predictable (See “Akufo-Addo Has Minimized NPP’s Chances for Victory – Awuni” Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/3/16). The fact of the matter is that ever since Mr. Awuni and his fellow jolly campers and anti-Akufo-Addo factionalists lost the chance to impose their will and favorite presidential candidate on the rest of the party’s membership and supporters, they have been zealously scheming to handicap the chances of an Akufo-Addo presidency materializing in the offing.

But we know from reliable electoral research and opinion polling that Mr. Awuni’s favorite presidential horse would have had an even far more difficult chance than Akufo-Addo in clinching victory for the party, with or without the summary suspension of any party chairman. We must also promptly highlight the fact that Mr. Awuni and his sponsors are making much ado about absolutely nothing, in basic Shakespearean parlance, because the suspension of Chairman Paul A. Afoko has precedent in the NPP. Thus, it is insufferably preposterous for the former Kufuor spokesman to claim that the justifiable indefinite suspension of Chairman Afoko is tantamount to the staging of a coup detat. This is quite interesting because when then-Chairman Harouna Esseku was summarily suspended from his post, Mr. Awuni was President Agyekum-Kufuor’s spokesman. Nowhere did Mr. Awuni publicly assert that Mr. Esseku’s suspension amounted to a coup detat.
And, of course, there is clearly a reason for this; and it is the fact that the straight-shooting Mr. Esseku was not good for business. Back then, the crime for which Mr. Esseku had been suspended was that he had indecently squealed to the press about Messrs. Kufuor and Kwadwo Mpiani having converted the Osu Castle, then the official seat of governance, into a blatant envelope-, or bribe-, receiving command post. Absolutely no investigations were conducted to ascertain the veracity, or otherwise, of Mr. Esseku’s allegation before the decision to suspend the latter was taken and effected. As of this writing, we still did not know whether Harouna Esseku was fairly suspended or not.

Well, the case regarding the suspension of Mr. Afoko is far more complicated than that of Mr. Esseku, in that Chairman Afoko also obliquely stands potentially guilty of bearing false witness for his younger brother, Mr. Gregory Afoko, in the brutal acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the former Upper-East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party. Mr. Gregory Afoko is currently standing trial for this most heinous of crimes against humanity. And, predictably, none of the Awuni camp-mates, notably Messrs. Mpiani and Richard Anane, have spoken to the fundamental question of social justice.

Needless to say, if anybody is making the chances of returning the Pachyderm to the Flagstaff House extremely difficult, it is certainly those adamant anti-Akufo-Addo factionalists who would have a man who may well have been directly involved in the brutal assassination of Mr. Mahama steer the affairs of the New Patriotic Party. Dirty politicians like Mr. Awuni ought to have at least a decent modicum of shame.

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