By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 14, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I don't know the man, except the fact that he is the National Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO). And presently, he is in a break-neck contest for the national chairmanship of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC). He is also a man in whom former Chairman Jerry John Rawlings appears to repose a hefty modicum of trust.

For example, during the course of a recent interview that he granted the host of the Adom-Fm sunrise program "Edwaso Nsem," Togbui Avaklasu, I, was widely reported to have observed that the contest for NDC National Chairman was evenly split between Mr. Portuphy and Alhaji Huudu Yahya (See "Rawlings Barks At Asiedu-Nketia, Betty Mould" Daily Guide / Ghanaweb.com 11/14/14). His protracted stay in power and all, there can be no gainsaying the fact that the integrity of Mr. Rawlings is as much at stake as the integrity of the very people with whom he iron-handedly lorded it over the country for some twenty years.

Alhaji Huudu Yahya, if memory serves yours truly accurately, is one of the jaded carryovers from the blotchy and bloody era of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). And the fact that an Indemnity Clause had to be inserted into Ghana's Republican Constitution in order to qualify Mr. Rawlings and his cohorts and lackeys to actively participate in the country's Fourth-Republican democratic dispensation, ought to raise eyebrows among those who are sincerely convinced of the word "Integrity's" not being a behavioral trait that ought to be lightly and rampantly bandied about the way that Chairman Rawlings and even some of the most questionable key operatives of the National Democratic Congress have been doing in recent months.

Indeed, as I hinted at the beginning of this column, I don't know much about the political track-record of Mr. Portuphy, but I surely learned something quite remarkable about his measurement or weight on the Integrity Scale (I. S.) not very long ago, when Ms. Anita D'Souza, the Deputy National Coordinator of NADMO, and Mr. Portuphy's right-hand woman, began to publicly express her avid desire to succeed her outgoing boss. Well, for those of our readers who may have missed this aspect of the "integrity" of the man, this is what Mr. Portuphy had to say about Ms. D'Souza.

In essence, Mr. Portuphy was of the deep-seated conviction that Ms. D'Souza was the least person or citizen qualified to take over from him as NADMO's National Coordinator. And so the most logical question to ask on the latter score is as follows: Precisely why had the NADMO boss kept mum, at least to public knowledge, when President John Mahama decided to nominate and officially name the National Women's Organizer of the National Democratic Congress as his substantive deputy, when Mr. Portuphy knew fully well that Ms. D'Souza was decidedly not qualified for the job?

Even more poignantly, why had Mr. Portuphy publicly welcomed Ms. D'Souza as NADMO's second-in-command, if the commander was fully aware of the fact that in case of his functional incapacitation, NADMO would effectively be left with no qualified or able-bodied leader?

This is what I think about, whenever questions pertaining to personal and professional integrity come up for discussion. Or in the case of Mr. Portuphy and Ms. D'Souza, is it just a matter of some sort of Volta Alliance Cosa Nostra? Somebody, kindly fill me in. I am totally at loss.