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

I don't know the basis upon which barb-tongued Mahama operatives like Kojo (Kwadwo?) Twum-Boafo were hired; the last time that he roiled the national media landscape, the CEO of the Ghana Free Zones Board was lambasting the entire leadership of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), for what he then claimed to be the unethical partisanship of the church's leadership.

Now our little souvenir prince is back at it again, this time at the throat of the Methodist Bishop of Obuasi, the Rt.-Rev. Stephen R. Bosomtwi-Ayensu, for observing quite accurately that President John Dramani Mahama and his team of National Democratic Congress warlords have been snoozing at our wheels of state (See "Pastors Should Not Take Offerings If Times Are Hard - Twum-Boafo" Graphic Online 2/1/14).

There is this weird and rather insulting perception among the lackeys and hangers-on of President Mahama that any criticism of the government is tantamount to "standing in the pulpit and doing NPP's agenda." Is the implication here that Ghanaians are darn too stolid to accurately measure the palpably poor level of job performance on the part of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress?

Well, I also hope that Mr. Twum-Boafo is not even obliquely threatening Bishop Bosomtwi-Ayensu when he rather presumptuously asserts as follows: "He is not going to get away with it. He is going to get a response, and that response is going to continue until he clarifies what it is [that] he wanted to say, because you can't just get up and talk about the president of our republic that way." It would be better for the imperious Free Zones CEO to tell his audience exactly what he presumes Bishop Bosomtwi-Ayensu to have wanted to say about the Mahama government but, somehow, was either too inarticulate or nervous to say.

At any rate, when did President Mahama, or anybody mandated to steer our national affairs, for that matter, authorize Mr. Twum-Boafo to arrogate himself the right to determine who qualifies to criticize the government or who does not? It is this the kind of arrogance which that moiety of the Ghanaian electorate that voted the NDC into power invited upon our pates. Now, we are saddled with the very brand of dictatorial democracy which Ghanaians struggled so hard to throw off our backs, with the hitherto auspicious advent of our Fourth Republic.

Then also, precisely what does he mean, when the Free Zones CEO sneeringly admonishes any cleric who aptly observes the harsh economic conditions facing Ghanaians not to collect offertories in their churches? Does it mean, for instance, that Mr. Twum-Boafo is a non-salaried employee of the government and, by extension, the Ghanaian taxpayer? And would foregoing offertories in churches cause the Mahama government to perform any better by, for example, remarkably abating the unbearably high spate of inflation in the country?

You see, this is the kind of lame and warped thinking that one renowned Ghanaian educator was recently reported to have bitterly decried about the quality of the country's educational system. Needless to say, if the nation is to meaningfully advance, people like Mr. Twum-Boafo ought to be kept safely away from positions of great responsibility for which they are so woefully under-qualified. Or better yet, Mr. Twum-Boafo is in dire need of the kind of education that would make him a more forward-looking person and a creative and critical thinker.

For sycophancy never did any self-respecting person any good. And Mr. Twum-Boafo is nearly old enough to appreciate this glaring fact of life.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 1, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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