KWAME OKOAMPA-AHOOFE’S HOT AIR AND VITUPERATION

My knee-jerk reaction after reading your articles titled ‘NDC Apparatchiks Are in a Deadly State of Denial and a subsequent one ‘Raising Storms in Teacup, was that: who the heck is this Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe who refers to himself as an Associate Professor who cannot do an unbiased analysis normally required of individuals who are adorned with the kind of academic credentials he appends to his name?

I must state emphatically that Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe’s rejoinders are nothing but an NPP spin doctor’s ranting which falls short of the scholastic reasoned arguments required of an academic of his stature. I wondered if the man even accredits some civility to the title he parades himself with especially in the choice of words in his attempt to display his linguistic prowess, as he claimed some are too linguistically challenged. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, you are a great apology to the highly reputable profession, teaching. If your chosen vocation—teaching—has not been able to transform you from the use of the most vituperate and base words, I would think that your time in the United States (though I am not in the position to know how long you have left your village in Ghana) should have taught you that when you disagree with people on issues they raise, you have the option to submit your arguments in a rejoinder just as you had tried to do but devoid of insults, vexations, biases and the emotions you have flagrantly displayed in your articles and be civil or shut up. Don’t you think that if even you lack self-respect, the academic title you claim restrains you a great deal to steer clear of words like oxymoronic, Vacuous, sophomoric and so own as you want to make your point especially as an ardent espouser of democracy as you sought to portray in your rejoinder? Please lets learn to debate issues devoid of the insults, Professor.

Clearly, a about half of Okoampa-Ahoofe’s first rejoinder, which captured the PNDC/NDC epochs in the political history of our beloved country, which had nothing to do with the issues raised in my article, could be saved for his students who may be curious to visit their teacher’s West African home, Ghana, one day and may be interested in some political history of his country. But it will do him and his students a lot of good if he would allow his students to do some reading on the political history of this country before he plunges into his tirade of ‘the most democratic, justice-loving and progressive government of postcolonial Ghana (in apparent reference to Kufour’s bogus democratic credentials) especially as an NPP aficionado. I wouldn’t go down that route of educating the learned Professor about democracy and justice but I know he is certainly aware that democracy is not just about queuing in the hot sun in Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana to vote. He must also be aware of justice in the true sense of the word where the judiciary is free from all manipulations from the executive arm of government and the media of which is a part plays its watchdog role without selling the ink in their ink bottles including their conscience. He should be aware that all well-meaning Ghanaians, with unbiased mind, including members of his own party who have been observing the ongoings in the so-called ‘most democratic Ghana are beginning to ask what would happen next. May be Ahoofe should call his village and inquire about the current democratic dispensation and be well updated, then he would understand that Ghana’s democracy has long failed the test and is gradually evolving into a monster which must be tamed sooner than later before it turned on us all and destroy us. I must state here that if Ghana is the model, then the international community is reeling under a heavy dose of deception either from the distorted media images or is simply adamant to see the reality of the Ghanaian situation. Now to the substantive issues of his first article, as I have chosen to address both rejoinders in this single article. First of all, is Okoampo-Ahoofe suggesting that since majority of Ghanaians voted for John Agyekum Kufour twice, they should not point out his government’s complicity in perpetuating wrong against the minority who supposedly didn’t vote for him?

Okoampo-Ahoofe should refer to a letter dated 23rd July and 2nd August 2007 by Mr. Raymond Okudzeto addressed to the Regional Commander of Police, Bernard Guyiri and Copied to the Inspector General of Police, Minister of Interior Kwamena Bartels, The Volta Regional Minister, Kofi Dzamesi, Minister of Chieftaincy Affairs, S.K. Boafo, and other government functionaries, and the response of Bernard Guyiri Dery in response to Mr. Raymond Okudzeto’s letter with copies to the above-mentioned government functionaries.

It would also do Okoampo-Ahoofe a lot of good to contact the editor of chronicle for a copy of Bernard Guyiri Dery’s letter to Mr. Raymond Okudzeto which was published in the chronicle. This evidences and a host of others which are already in the public domainr would inform him about the extent to which individuals who are paid from the sweat of the tax payer could expend state resources to disinform, arrest, brutalize and cause mayhem in certain areas of the country because they have the coercive state power vested in them by the supposed majority.

As I continued to dissect Okoampo-Ahoofe’s submissions, I was nearly turned away to discount the learned Professor as a novice in Ghanaian politics when he posits ‘I was also, naturally, intrigued by the novel and quite curious concept of an Anlo Parliamentary Seat, one that was exclusively reserved for Ghanaians who could, perhaps, prove their Anlo ethnic identity through DNA evidence, rather than one, as pertains in all true democracies, that is contested on the basis of the candidates acceptability to the bulk of the electorate of the Anlo district, or constituency’

Indeed, in the just ended race for the presidential race of the NPP, I have heard not one but many among the 17 aspirants extolled their ethnic origin in the broad daylight and on political platforms as they criss-crossed the nooks and crannies of the country to campaign for votes. Does this by implication, in fact, by his own benchmark mean that even in the ‘most democratic’ dispensation in postcolonial era, ethnicity is not an issue and one needs a DNA to prove it and avoid defeat in an election? I think you are simply not a serious Professor!!!

If you can assure me that the name Tsikata can contest a parliamentary seat at Mahyia constituency in Kumasi and win without all the ethnic brouhaha it would generate, then I can assure you that you don’t need a DNA to prove your ethnicity in order to contest Anlo parliamentary seat. Go back and read on ethnicity in Ghanaian body polity and reposition your thinking on that issue. On the issue of the surreptitious disappearance of the cadavers of the victims of the November 1, 2005, shootings. I would like to reiterate my point that the bodies were removed from the morgues without the knowledge of the families. Logically, when the cause of death was still in dispute, all reasonable beings including you, except you are unprepared to shed your biases, would expect government to set up an independent body to take charge of the autopsy in order to clear the foreseen doubt that may emanate from the autopsy with regards to the veracity of the results. So even at your level of intellectual development it did not even prick your learned mind that in an attempt to cover up, evidence could be vitiated in the process of autopsy?

Now take you time to answer the following questions in a bullet point for me:

• When did the police inform Dumega Raymond Okudzeto that they had stolen the bodies from the various morgues? The bereaved families were with Raymond Okudzeto on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 till the afternoon in Accra to ostensibly to look for their corpses.

• Who were the family members the CID boss said knew about the conveyance of the bodies?

• Who were the other opinion leaders who granted the permission for the bodies to be conveyed?

• What documentations and who signed those documents before the release of the bodies at both the Keta and the Ho hospitals?

• When was the Hospital Administrator and the Medical Officer in-charge of the Keta Government hospital informed about the removal of the bodies? • Are the police not suspects in this matter?

• Could the suspects again be the investigators, the coroners, the pathologists, the prosecutors and at the same have a ‘SAFE CUSTODY’ of the bodies?

• Why would the CID boss then be wondering what they could have been doing with the bodies? There are thousand and one things they could do with the corpses

• Why the inconsistency between the CID boss and the District Chief Executive of Keta, Kofi Edward Ahiabor? Between Korle-Bu and Police Hospital is a long distance.

I reiterate that the bodies were surreptitiously removed from the morgues of the respective hospitals without following due procedure and the police CID boss lied to the Ghanaian public about that. He should summon me before court and I can prove that to him.

I am glad that you are aware that not every loudmouth Ghanaian is an intelligent Ghanaian, so can it be extrapolated that indeed, not all Professors can think outside the box and on their feet and apply some of the things they read in books to save their poor country Ghana from the pangs of looters. If they would think outside the box, they would understand that just as they are NPP apparatchiks, so would others be NDC, CPP and PNC apparatchiks. It is the ideological stances of the parties that matter, so Prof. please mind your language. After all did we not sign for multiparty democracy when we endorsed the 1992 constitution?

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