By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 13, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

There is an article circulating on the Internet captioned “The Fault Lies in Akufo-Addo, not Kufuor.” Ordinarily, both article and author would be of absolutely no moment to me because the author, a diehard Kpegah waif, has vowed to character assassinate the 2016 New Patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential Candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, until the latter has been effectively consigned into oblivion. Not that I give a hoot. The fact of the matter is that the writer of the aforementioned article, for want of a better term, has absolutely no credibility when it comes to writing anything worthwhile about New Patriotic Party leaders, without exception.

His rambling and desultory pabulum is in obvious response to a previous column that I wrote and published, titled “Kufuor Has Been Sabotaging Akufo-Addo Since 2008.” A frontal rejoinder to Mr. Ben Ephson’s talk-radio interview on the same subject, the contents are self-explanatory; and so I wouldn’t bother to rehash the same here. What bears emphasizing here, however, is that when it comes to the subject of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, I defer to absolutely no one! Scarcely any Ghanaian journalist and/or writer has written more in defense of the man and his legacy, or whatever may now be left of the latter, than the present writer. And so if the occasion has arisen for me to write anything critical of the man, it must be with and for a good reason. You cannot, of course, say the same thing for Dr. Trokosi who is so full of his own self-importance that he has never quite learned where to place his academic credentials in relation to his byline or name.
Nearly everything this Trokosi Nationalist has written about the NPP leaders has been nothing short of vitriol, except for rascals and ideological traitors like Drs. McNasty, McHypocrite and McMole. Those of you regular readers of my columns know who these pathological reprobates and opportunistic characters are. Political-treasure hunters, at least one of them has publicly confessed to the same. The Trokosi Nationalist does not seem to know the difference between the Ayoko/Oyoko and the Asona clans. His offerings in this area are sheer travelogues, and so I would not even bother to engage him on the inner familial dynamics of Ghana’s single most important culture and ethnic group. It is not my fault he was born into a tribe and a culture he seems to have no respect and use for, except to constantly rail at Divine Providence for making him a Trokosi Nationalist. That is his own problem. Let him stew in his own brine.

I am also quite certain that many of my readers, including Dr. Trokosi, unfortunately, may not know this because unlike that Anlo-Ewe SOB, I have absolutely no need to toot my horn when what the occasion demands is forthright and selfless contribution to the salutary discourse on national development. Recently, for instance, Dr. Trokosi used the rehashed perennial subject of the place of our indigenous languages in our elementary school curriculum as an occasion for obloquy; he impugned the intelligence and common sense of Prof. Naana Opoku-Agyeman, his former English teacher, because Ghana’s substantive Education Minister had dared to call for the reintroduction of local Ghanaian languages into the country’s elementary academies. His obvious “siege-mentality” angst was that the Akan-majority language would win the battle which, by the way, was not even about the question of a national lingua franca which, by the way, he could do absolutely nothing to halt, were the question to be put on the ballot for a referendum and decided as such.

Dr. Trokosi may very well be getting handsomely paid for the patent and invariable swill he incessantly puts in print and on the ’Net for his tribesmen and women to consume ad nauseam; but it may also interest him to learn that when I decided to edit the grant proposal drafts for both the J. A. Kufuor and Aliu Mahama foundations, per a request from Ms. Dapaah, I did so absolutely gratis. You see, I have authoritatively established my credibility when it comes to writing about momentous matters of Ghana’s socioeconomic, cultural and political development. And yes, Dr. Trokosi is entitled to disdaining my selfless contribution to our nation’s development. But he has absolutely no right or credibility to presume to impugn the same.