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

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The other day, one of those Kpegah Boys who have sworn to move Heaven and Hell to ensure that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo never got elected President of Ghana in their lifetime, wrote to enquire why The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, had yet to make news headlines in the form of the issuance of a congratulatory message to our President-Elect. I could not stop myself from sneering with amused contempt. It well appears that Akufo-Addo’s mind-blowing and precedent-setting electoral coup has effectively tied the ball-point tongues of the diarrheal pens of these SOBs as to make them contend themselves with such patent interrogative irrelevancies.

The fact of the matter is that a man who has been hell-bent on writing and publishing reams of character-assassinating articles aimed at scuttling the presidential ambitions of Ghana’s former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, could not be expected to give a hoot over whether The Okyenhene issued congratulatory messages to Nana Akufo-Addo or Vice-President-Elect Mahamudu Bawumia. That SOB, if he were endowed with any remarkable modicum of a conscience, would be profusely apologizing for his legion acts of unprovoked hatred against the man who, whether the avowed character assassin likes it or not, barring any accident or unforeseen circumstances, is poised to governing the Sacred Democratic Republic of Ghana (SDRG) for the next four years, and possibly more.

The virulently anti-Akufo-Addo Kpegahist critic has the chutzpah to remark that The Okyenhene is our President-Elect’s “King.” Well, it may dishearten the Trokosi Nationalist critic to learn that as a bona fide democratically elected President of Ghana, and not just Okyeman or Akyem-Abuakwa, Nana Akufo-Addo is equally the leader of all ethnic and sub-ethnic polities of the entire geopolitical landscape of Ghana. Besides, contrary to what the Kpegahist critic would have his readers believe, any constitutionally elected President of Ghana is not the “subject” of any particular traditionally invested monarch or chief, that leader’s ethnic affiliation notwithstanding. For at the end of the day, President Akufo-Addo is first and foremost a bona fide Ghanaian citizen before all else.

I find it necessary to reply this Kpegahist critic because not very long ago, the same critic wrote and published an article in which he desperately sought to impugn the credibility of then-Candidate Akufo-Addo, by claiming that The Okyenhene had profusely salaamed President John Dramani Mahama and some apparatchiks of the ruling National Democratic Congress at a ceremony marking the anniversary enstoolment of the reign of the paramount chief of Koforidua-Effiduase, in the New-Juaben traditional area of the Eastern Region, President-Elect Akufo-Addo’s electoral stronghold. The Effiduasehene would shortly issue a public statement emphatically putting paid to such flagrant act of political mischief.

We must also make it crystal clear that the success, or the lack thereof, of the incoming Akufo-Addo Administration would not the least bit be dependent on the pro-forma issuance of congratulatory messages of any Ghanaian traditional rulers, but rather the caliber and dedication of the cabinet appointees who President-Elect Akufo-Addo decides to work with. It is also quite certain that had Nana Akufo-Addo made Kyebi his first post-election victory port of call and victory celebration, the same Trokosi Nationalist critic would have made a capital tribal issue out of the same. In other words, for these pathologically cynical critics, Akufo-Addo eternally deserves to be damned no matter what he does or says.

The diehard Kpegahist Trokosi Nationalist would also do himself and his audiences some good to avail himself of what Dr. J. B. Danquah, the celebrated and immortalized Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics had to say about the incurably republican spirit and character of the citizens of Okyeman, in particular the people of Akyem-Abuakwa. In sum, while we, Akyemfuo/Okyemfuo (The Mighty Leopards) have great respect for our “Asagyefuo,” nevertheless, we take our marching orders as citizens of a post-modern and postcolonial polity from absolutely nobody, besides that which is clearly articulated in the 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution.

Needless to say, it is the preceding, among a host of others, of course, that makes the Akyem people the quite richly blessed and progressively unique people that we are today. This is absolutely in no way to suggest or imply that the Akyem are any fundamentally different from the rest of the Ghanaian people. It is simply to point out to those who have elected themselves as our diehard enemies, ardent critics and haters that in the larger scheme of our national affairs, the Akyem are as civically conciliatory, inclusive, respectful and responsible and politically progressive as any other group of bona fide Ghanaian citizens.

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