By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Oct. 28, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I knew in the wake of the indefinite suspension of Chairman Paul Afoko by a unanimous decision of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that tempers were bound to flare up. What I did not expect, but could well have predicted all the same, would have been for ardent NPP factionalists like Mr. Andrews Awuni to have emerged swinging and pontifically, farcically and imperiously impugning the authority, common sense and intelligence of the members of the party’s Council-of-Elders (COE) who moved with snail-paced, albeit timely, deliberation to prevent Chairman Afoko from literally running the country’s largest political organization aground (See “Akufo-Addo, NPP Elders Must Stop Lying – Awuni” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/27/15).

Mr. Awuni, for those who may not readily remember the man, was once the spokesman for President John Agyekum-Kufuor, just like incumbent General-Secretary Kwabena Agyei Agyepong. And so we have quite a good sense of what working hand-in-glove with an inveterate Akufo-Addo internal political opponent like Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani can make one feel. Almost like one who has been pumped up silly on some hallucinogenic drugs. Yes, that is about the only way that Mr. Awuni could presume to possess superior intellect and insight into the internal, internecine factional crisis that prompted the C. K. Tedam-headed NPP National Executive Committee, the Council-of-Elders and the Asante-Antwi-led Disciplinary Committee to organize a send-off shaming party for Chairman Afoko, who has yet to explain to party chiefs and the nation at large, precisely what part he played in the acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the former Upper-East’s regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party.
This question is very serious and relevant because in the wake of Mr. Mahama’s death, Chairman Afoko unsuccessfully attempted to cop an alibi for his younger brother, Mr. Gregory Afoko. We may well be talking about a “contract killing” here. Now, if Mr. Awuni and his factional ilk among the ranks of the New Patriotic Party are convinced that contract killings are execrable to the temperament of the membership of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition, then why are these very same people staunchly backing Chairman Afoko to unconscionably defy the decision of the legitimately sworn members of the highest disciplinary organ of the party? It is exactly a year since Mr. Afoko was elected National Chairman of the NPP at the Tamale Delegates’ Congress. And so rather than chide the NPP-NEC and the Council-of-Elders for doing little to advance the good fortunes and unity and cohesion of the party, maybe Mr. Awuni would do himself and the rest of us greater good by explaining to us precisely what measures he, himself, and the faction of the NPP of which he is a key player have put in place to advance the collective cause of the destiny of the party.

Mr. Tedam has spoken loud and clear – we shall fully examine what he had to say in due course – and the Chairman of the party’s Council-of-Elders has categorically stated that Mr. Afoko had the destiny of the party in his pocket and was capriciously doing a death dance – or dervish – with the destiny and affairs of at least a moiety of the country’s electorate and citizenry. Mr. Awuni claims that Mr. Tedam and the highly respected elders of the party are jiving liars. And so let the former Kufuor spokesman tell the rest of us precisely what we are missing, in particular what such mendacity as he so pontifically alleges is all about. In other words, why does Mr. Awuni suppose that the electoral misadventure of Mr. Afoko as NPP Chairman was the best thing that ever happened to the country, since Ghana’s reassertion of her sovereignty from British colonial rule.


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