By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 18, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I don't want to brgrudge any cronies and/or associates of the late Mr. Paul Victor Obeng their inalienable right to eulogize the man in whatever ways they want. Even as I write, I am mourning my own dead, that of one of my paternal Kyebi and Tumfa relatives, Mr. Kwame Otieku (1950-2014), an incredibly generous man and former Overseas Manager of Lockheed Martin, the globally renowned airplane parts manufacturer, in Syracuse, New York, whose funeral and burial will take place in Syracuse on Sept. 12-13. That he suffered chronic heart problems, may well have had a lot to do with the fact that my cousin had a really generous heart. I doubt very much, though, that most Ghanaians who lived under the raw tyranny of the Obeng-partnered and Rawlings-led half-junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) could provide the same testimony for the Adansi-Akrokyere native.

Nevertheless, I am of the deepest conviction that it crosses the line of respect for the human rights of the legion victims of the untold atrocities of the erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), for a prominent Roman Catholic prelate like the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Charles Palmer-Buckle, to seriously wish any of our youths to emulate a moral reprobate and terrorists' accomplice like the former head of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings' cabinet of vindictive Gaddhafy-schooled robber-baron revolutionaries (See "Live Life Like P. V. Obeng - Palmer-Buckle" MyJoyOnline.com 8/15/14).

To be certain, I wouldn't even wish Mr. Obeng's patently depraved and hypocritically self-aggrandizing life on the dead man's own grandchildren and the latter's relatives, let alone on the children and grandchildren of any honest, hardworking and forward-looking Ghanaian citizens. In much the same way, I wouldn't wish the murderous and wantonly corrupt and barbaric lives of Chairman Rawlings and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman, on the couple's own children and grandchildren. I also don't know that expediently under-valuing the godly beauty and significance of longevity, simply to please the relatives, friends and associates of the man who unconscionably conspired with the Sogakope Mafia in criminal violation of Ghanaian democracy puts Archbishop Palmer-Buckle in any enviable light.

The fact of the matter is that at 67 years old, Mr. Obeng had lived far too long for a man who, together with other murderous megalomaniacs, brought so much pain to so many Ghanaians. And maybe it is worth our while to observe the fact that the life expectancy of Ghanaian citizens is just under 60 years. We must also highlight the fact that of the 8 senior officers of the Ghana Armed Forces summarily executed by firing squad, by Chairman Rawlings, with the staunch backing of Mr. Obeng, the oldest among these slain accused corrupt soldier-politicians was 48 years old. And the latter, of course, was the publicly and thoroughly humiliated Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.

I also vehemently disagree with the Accra Metropolitan Archbishop that Mr. Obeng "paid his dues and served mankind to the best of his ability and should be emulated by the living." Precisely what dues did P.V., as Mr. Obeng was popularly known, pay by criminally collaborating with the Rawlingses and the Tsikatas and the Chambases and Asamoahs and Botchweys and Dadzies in the treasonable use of fishing vessels belonging to the Mankoadze Fishing Company in the forcible and unconstitutional overthrow of the Limann-led government of the People's National Party (PNP)? And could any objective student of postcolonial Ghanaian politics look the cholera-wracked and Ebola-threatened Ghanaian populace in the eye and unabashedly declare, nearly 33 years later, that Ghanaians are the better for the PNDC overthrow of the PNP, and the latter's ultimate replacement by the so-called National Democratic Congress?

Well, Nana Ato Dadzie has never come off to me as a very coherent P/NDC apparatchik, and so when the former Rawlings Chief-of-Staff gushes that "PV is irreplaceable... [and that] God in his infinite wisdom [Praise be to Little Dramani!] may raise more PVs for Ghana, I can only fervently hope that Mr. Dadzie finds himself in a first-rate psychiatric hospital in the near future. I mean, the very notion that, somehow, among the top priorities of Divine Providence is the creation of more nation-wreckers, is one that any morally upright human would not wish upon the pates of his/her inveterate political and ideological opponents, much less upon the well-meaning population of a whole nation.

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