Opinions of Sunday, 10 April 2016

Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

Get Real, Kofi Adams, Kufuor dd not support Aliu Mahama

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 1, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

He is not a very bright young man. But this does not matter the least bit, because the National Youth Organizer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is smack among the ranks of a clinically obtuse hoodlum pack who may at best be described as mildly retarded. Mr. Kofi Adams, the former water-boy of the Rawlings Clan would have his Tamale audience of party faithful believe that the three-time Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is not worth affording the leadership nod, because in 2007 then-lame-duck President John Agyekum-Kufuor did not personally back the presidential ambtions of Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “Kufuor Didn’t Support Akufo-Addo in 2007 – Kofi Adams” Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/9/16).

It is bitterly ironic that Mr. Adams would choose Tamale, of all places, the stronghold of President Kufuor’s two-time running-mate and two-term Vice-President of Ghana, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, late, to so morbidly and unconscionably insult the intelligence of the people of the Northern Region which, by the way, is also the home region of incumbent President John Dramani Mahama. What is quite instructive here is that in facilely presuming to play Akufo-Addo against former President Kufuor, Mr. Adams actually ends up impugning the integrity of perhaps the country’s best Fourth-Republican premier.

Why, for instance, is Mr. Adams not questioning Mr. Kufuor’s flat refusal to endorse then-Vice-President Aliu Mahama, the former’s able and loyal arch-lieutenant for the two terms that Mr. Kufuor served as President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana? If, as he clearly seems to have believed, President Kufuor thought highly enough of Alhaji Mahama to have made him his running-mate and two-time Vice-President, what prevented the former Popular-Front Party’s parliamentary representative from Atwima-Nwabiagya from publicly endorsing Alhaji Mahama for the presidency in 2007?

In other words, in the lead-up to Election 2008, President Kufuor had a far greater obligation to endorsing the presidential candidacy of Alhaji Mahama than he did Nana Akufo-Addo. At this juncture, it is not even relevant to delve into the issue of whom then-President Kufuor’s favorite electoral steed was. Even the “Okro Analogy” that Mr. Adams made does not hold water. The fact of the matter is that a “dead okro” or “dry okro” is far better preserved and thus of better use than fresh okro, a perishable vegetable that ought to be promptly cooked and consumed, and then almost as hurriedly evacuated from one’s bowels and flushed down one’s toilet bowl to be treated into manure.

And, oh yes, the right terminology for the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress is “Manure,” one that is only good for preparing the way for a more creative and progressive leadership. And, by the way, has it also mnemonically not dawned on Mr. Adams that in 2008, the Rawlingses, his former paymasters, virulently portrayed the now-President Mahama, then the newly selected running-mate of then-Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, as the most untrustworthy vice-presidential candidate material?

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