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

In the heated lead-up to Election 2008, his boss loudly, repeatedly and categorically promised to find and severely prosecute the alleged killers of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II, the overlord of Dagbon, in no time; and so it must have come as quite an insolent surprise and a rude political awakening to the entire Dagbon royal family that Deputy Presidential Chief-of-Staff, Mr. Alexander Segbefia should be blaming the erstwhile Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) for having failed to fulfill a major electioneering plank of the Mills-led and now-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).
It is also unpardonably insulting that both Messrs. Baba Jamal and Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the two voluble and rambunctious deputies of Ghana’s Information Ministry, should be blaming the Andani Royal Gate for being so scandalously naïve as to believe that, indeed, the Mills-Mahama government was poised to ferreting out the alleged murderers of their patriarch and relentlessly and mercilessly prosecuting them (See “NDC Never Promised to Find Ya-Na Killers – Baba Jamal” MyJoyOnline.com 11/14/11).
For his part, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa rudely reminded the bereaved gate of the Dagbon royal family, whose youth had threatened to assist in voting the NDC out of power, that empty campaign promises are integral to Ghanaian politics (See “Andanis Can’t Threaten NDC with Votes – Ablakwa” Ghanaweb.com 11/10/11).
What is also significant to recall here, if only for the damning insight that it provides into the mindset and temperament of key NDC operatives, is the fact that early this year, the Mills-Mahama government rounded up some Dagbon scapegoats, including one who was barely 10 years old, and presented them before a legitimately constituted court of law as the killers of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II and some forty elders of his court. The hope here, of course, was to score cheap political points; and so it did not surprise many Ghanaians that the charges preferred against these largely circumstantial victims were promptly dismissed. It may, indeed, have been in reference to this dastardly act of the Mills-Mahama government that Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa was forced to remind the angry youths of the Andani Gate, of the Dagbon royal family, that arresting and prosecuting the real killers of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II must be strictly based on justice and the rule of law.
Still, what is amusing about Mr. Segbefia’s attempt to lay blame for the epic failure of President John Evans Atta-Mills to bring the alleged killers of the Dagbon overlord to book, as promised, is the presidential deputy chief’s rather risible attempt at playing what New Yorkers call “Tuesday-Night Quarterback,” in American-football parlance. Thus Mr. Segbefia now claims that the failure of the Kufuor administration to apprehend the suspects in the Ya-Na regicide during “the first crucial 48 hours after the incident” may have irreparably complicated the ability of Tarkwa-Atta to positively deliver on his electioneering campaign promise to the people of Dagbon.
The problem with this sort of pedestrian hindsight analysis is that the Mills-Mahama government operatives knew about this glaring fact of professional sleuthing going into Election 2008 and yet insisted on being capable of bringing the alleged suspects in the Ya-Na murder case to book. What is even more nauseating is the fact that even NDC heavyweights like the now-humiliated ex-President Jerry John Rawlings publicly claimed to be in possession of the proverbial smoking gun.
The good news here is that Ghanaian voters now have ample forensic evidence from Messrs. Segbefia, Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Jamal decisively indicating that, indeed, it would be nothing short of the demonstrably suicidal and downright foolhardy for any well-meaning citizen to invest any modicum of faith and/or trust in the Mills-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress. In short, the clearly abject insensitivity of the NDC towards both gates of the Dagbon royal family ought to serve as a definitive lesson for other feuding major Ghanaian royal families. And that definitive lesson, of course, is that the NDC would not hesitate to double-kill the patriarch of any aggrieved and bereaved royal family to score cheap and bloody political points, and then secure power to further torture and humiliate the aggrieved and bereaved.

*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 “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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