By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Feb. 6, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

When first I came across the brief news article captioned “Police Officer Resigns to Campaign for Akufo-Addo” (Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/25/16), I thought it was a prank or even an April Fool’s Joke. But when I checked my calendar, I discovered to my puzzled amusement that it was not the First of April. Then I reread the story and came to one significant conclusion. This was one heck of a very responsible and well-meaning Ghanaian law-enforcement agent who was genuinely disenchanted with the rag-tag and endlessly bumbling Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress and wanted to see a change of government as soon and as fast as possible.

The police officer whose name was given as Dianatah Nicodemus, appeared to envisage an Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government as the best alternative to enable him to appreciably improve the quality of his life. And he may be right; President John Dramani Mahama has spent most of the last year, we are told, secretly and disrespectfully negotiating with the Obama Administration for the release and hosting of hardcore and high-risk Islamist terrorists from the U.S.-operated maximum-security prison at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.

Ghanaians ought to have anticipated something in the nature of the anathema brought upon their pates by their politically irresponsible, adamant and insufferably arrogant leader, when President Mahama recently informed them that with the exceptions of former Presidents Jerry John Rawlings and John Agyekum-Kufuor, they had absolutely no right to either criticize him personally or the government that he has established at the Flagstaff House. He intended to conduct himself and his government any way and manner he chose to, and that whoever had a problem with his style of governance could take a hike.

And so one can perhaps aptly assume that Corporal Dianatah Nicodemus is a very sensible and responsible young man who decided to heed the advice of the Bole-Bamboi Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House. At first, I readily assumed that Corporal Nicodemus was one of those Akufo-Addo kinsmen who try to spring up a prank from time to time, such as the one who established a think tank named after one of his forebears, named himself executive director of the same and began shamelessly manufacturing self-serving polling figures when the stark reality glaringly indicated something quite different.

The news report also stated that the resigned law-enforcement officer was with the New Juaben Municipal Police Command. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to read further that Officer Dianatah Nicodemus was actually a northern-descended Ghanaian citizen who intended to work hard for his keep in the 2016 Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Presidential Campaign. In return, Corporal Nicodemus reportedly expects to be rewarded with the plum post of District Chief Executive Officer which he intended to use as a stepping stone to launching a political career as a New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for his unspecified parliamentary district or constituency in the Northern Region. Now, this is a man who fully appreciates the give-and-take of realpolitik and is willing to go the whole proverbial nine yards in a bid to justifiably achieving the same.

We can only say kudos and god speed to Corporal Dianatah Nicodemus and fervidly hope that his dreams come to fruition in the not-very-distant future. Who said police officers were not permitted to dream big and actually follow up on their dreams like the rest of us? What was not the least bit clear to me from the article regarded the fact of whether Corporal Nicodemus had sought clearance from either Nana Akufo-Addo or any of the key operatives of his 2016 Presidential Campaign, in terms of his role with the campaign and any bread-and-butter issues until such time that he assumed the post of DCE and then subsequently appropriated the latter position as a spring board to his august parliamentary career.

But of course, the other aspect of my psyche which psychologists and psychoanalysts call the superego quickly pointed out to me that it was not my business vis-à-vis how Corporal Dianatah Nicodemus ended up in life. Of course, there may also be the other side of his former professional existence, in particular regarding how the young police officer felt treated by his bosses in the service. What is unarguable is the apparent fact that Corporal Nicodemus clearly appears to have since long arrived at the conclusion that his employment with the Ghana Police Service was decidedly at a dead-end. As a DCE, he would also get the chance to pass his leisure hours in a college lecture theater with the possibility of enviably earning one of those cheap MBAs and law degrees alleged to have been earned at public expense by many a deputy cabinet appointee in the Mahama government.

It is, however, not clear whether an Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration, which we have been told time and again would be relatively far more fiscally disciplined, would help this young man to achieve his dreams.

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