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

Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa ought to be more worried about the possibility of getting suspended from Parliament for bearing false witness, in the matter of the invidious accusation of Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko for allegedly attempting to bribe his way through the ministerial nomination confirmation process before the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC), if justice is allowed to prevail, and stop pretending as if he was interested in anything besides his fat paycheck (See “Bimbilla Conflict to Feature in Budget – Akomea Explains SONA ‘Omission’” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 2/22/17).

It is time for the likes of Nana Akomea, the New Patriotic Party’s Director of Communications, to stop coddling these self-serving National Democratic Congress’ sworn detractors of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and tell it like it is, as New Yorkers are wont to say. Indeed, unless he was clinically retarded, there was absolutely no reason for Mr. Okudzeo-Ablakwa to have expected the President to be talking and making gratuitous references to Bimbilla, when the issue of the conflict being discussed in his State of the Nation Address regarded Ghana’s foreign policy in the West African sub-region.

But even more significant must be pointed out the fact that the former Justice and Foreign Minister had intimated prior to the full presentation of his maiden State of the Nation Address (SONA) that he was only going to present a brief and broadly generalized picture of where the country stood presently on the socioeconomic terrain. He had also gone way out of his way to indicate that a more detailed analysis of the government’s frame of development reference would be presented to Parliament, and the nation at large, in early March when Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta addressed the nation.

Personally, I believe it would be more appropriate for Mr. Dominic Nitiwul to make a presentation on the Bimbilla chieftaincy conflict, perhaps together with the Minister of the Interior, since the Defense Minister is the incumbent Member of Parliament for Bimbilla, and must therefore be expected to have more intimate knowledge of this protracted conflict which once took the life of the paramount chief of the township under the tenure of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress. We also know, and this has been publicly attested by some prominent members of the Bimbilla royal family, or gate, that the conflict has been unnecessarily exacerbated by big-time politicians like Dr. Ibrahim Ibn Chambas, a Bimbilla native, who, by the way, represents the United Nations Secretary-General in the West African and Sahel regions, and is specifically charged with maintaining the peace hereabouts.

Also, contrary to what Mr. Okudzeto- Ablakwa would have his audience of NDC partisans believe, there was absolutely no demonstration of preference for international conflict resolution in President Akufo-Addo’s speech. Neither was his purported omission of the Bimbilla conflict an egregious error in judgment. The so-called ranking member on the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee has clearly exposed himself here to be a cynical off-sider who does not even appreciate the fact that he spoke out of order when he gratuitously criticized President Akufo-Addo for either failing or refusing to make a foreign-policy argument out of the Bimbilla conflict.

An overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian citizenry ought to be fed up with perennial conflict situations like Bimbilla, which only drains scarce monetary and other capital resources that ought to be going into our collective national development budget, instead of courting the selfish, decidedly benighted parochial interests of a few ethnic and political criminals in our society. We ought to have by now fully come to terms with the stark and insufferably annoying fact that the Bimbilla conflict, and similar ones, are categorical acts of abject and heinous criminality that ought not to be tolerated under any circumstances whatsoever. Needless to say, it is too late in the history of our time to be eternally marking time instead of marching forward.

By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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