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



It is old news. However, as a significant theme of preparedness to duke it out over any attempt by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to strong-arm its way back to power post-Election 2012, the “All-Die-Be-Die” slogan may yet be the most effective of its kind devised by any major opposition party since 1957.

What prompted me to write this piece, of course, has everything to do with the recent decisive and historic liquidation of the abominable monstrosity that was the 42-year-old, so-called September Revolution, chaperoned by the recently deceased Col. Muammar Gaddhafy, by the Benghazi-dominated Libyan Transitional National Council. It surely ought to be envisaged by Ghana’s ruling National Democratic Congress as the proverbial handwriting on the wall.

Needless to say, in the Libyan situation, Mr. Gaddhafy, who had virtually become a law unto himself, was hell-bent on enslaving his people in perpetuity. And had he met his death under normal or natural circumstances, it is almost certain that one of his haughty sons would have succeeded the tyrannical monstrosity in firmly shaping up what would have become the Gaddhafy dynasty. But, of course, the Libyan people knew far better, having been unmistakably imbued by divine providence with the inalienable spirit of freedom and self-determination.

And so in the end, primitive foolery had to give way to common sense and justice. It was, needless to say, all too evident that Mr. Gaddhafy was certain to meet with an ignoble death, the kind of death that he had reportedly meted the tens of democracy-loving Libyans who had dared to challenge his iron grip on power.

The foregoing is precisely what the presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) meant, when early this year Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo admonished supporters and sympathizers of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo School to steel themselves up and be religiously prepared to fight the Gaddhafy-mentored and Mills-led National Democratic Congress (See “Elvis Ankrah: Nana Addo’s Comment Complete Buffoonery” Modernghana.com 2/10/11).

It is, of course, all too logical for the Akufo-Addo pep-talk to have been met with guilt-tinged fury by members of the ruling National Democratic Congress, including President John Evans Atta-Mills, who has been smugly and silently presiding over a culture of rank verbal abuse by almost every deputy member of his cabinet. Thus it was not the least bit surprising to hear Deputy Local Government Minister, Mr. Elvis Ankrah, promptly characterize the Akufo-Addo pep-talk as one of arrant “buffoonery.” Maybe somebody among the ranks of his own party ought to have played back then-Candidate Mills’ vow to reduce Ghana to a Kenya-type apocalypse in the event of the former University of Ghana law professor and his party losing the legitimate mandate of the Ghanaian people at the 2008 polls. It is not yet clear to what extent such crude rhetoric of abject intimidation may have played into significantly altering the results of the 2008 presidential runoff.

It is also rather amusing to hear the Local Government second-bananas bitterly gripe about the deafening silence of virtually all “civil society groups, the clergy and other well-meaning Ghanaians.” Maybe somebody ought to remind Mr. Ankrah that the groups he so self-righteously damns, for supposedly being complicit with the Akufo-Addo-minted “All-Die-Be-Die” slogan, are not composed of a newly-born membership; and also, particularly the fact that almost each and every one of the key players of these civic institutions has likely endured one form of flagrant injustice or another under the 20-year repressive tenure of the Rawlings-led Provisional/National Democratic Congress (P/NDC).

The most effective riposte, of course, came from NPP General-Secretary Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie (aka Sir John), who pointedly questioned the abject lack of manners of Mr. Ankrah. Still, perhaps, the most significant warning that ought to be dispatched to the Mills-Mahama posse, is the unreserved preparedness of the New Patriotic Party to assume full police powers if the mischief-making NDC apparatchiks decide, once again, to take well-meaning and fair-minded Ghanaians down the road to Atiwa, Chereponi and Abutia.



*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Selected Political Writings” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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