By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 20, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The crocodile tears that some of the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) have been pretending to be shedding for Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, 70, whose passing at a London hospital was announced early Sunday morning, is rather pathetic (See “Jake’s Death Left Us Heart Broken – NDC” Modernghana.com 3/20/16).

Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the General-Secretary of the NDC, released a predictably badly rehearsed and scandalously vacuous pro-forma statement to the media in which he disingenuously claimed that Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey’s passing had left him and his colleagues “heart-broken.” Well, let’s leave such cant for the evaluation and judgment of those who have been sedulously watching our national political scene since January 2009.

That Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey was exactly 19 years old on the very day that Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah was unconscionably and summarily assassinated by paid surrogates working at the behest of President Kwame Nkrumah and his extortionate Convention People’s Party (CPP) government, has quite a significant meaning for our country beyond mere calendrical abstractions. Jake’s own father, Mr. Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, a member of the legendary Big Six, had himself been callously humiliated and prematurely dispatched to his grave by Mr. Kwame Nkrumah at the Condemned- Cell Block at the Nsawam Prison some two or three years earlier.

We may never know the deleterious, and devastating, impact that this egregious crime against humanity had on the fortunes and destiny of the younger Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey. Whatever posterity may have to say about this political giant and finest of gentlemen, one thing is certain – Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey served his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and country with remarkable distinction and as best as he could. It is also certain that wherever his ghost and/or spirit may be lingering presently, former President John Evans Atta-Mills could not be very pleased to be forced to welcome Jake among the teeming ranks of those who have gone ahead.

At 70 and a good Christian, Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey had enviably lived out, fully, the temporal span afforded him by Divine Providence. Messrs. Edward Omane-Boamah and Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa could not be very regretful about the passing of the man whose image and hard-won reputation they tried so passionately and viciously to permanently injure and destroy before the Wood-presided august Supreme Court of Ghana. Perhaps these two young cynical cabinet appointees are even popping champagne in hearty celebration of the passing of Jake, even as I write with a well of tears in my eyes. Of course, I have known Jake to have been indisposed for quite some time now.

And, of course, the current Communications Minister and Deputy Education Minister, respectively, could not have almost successfully embarked on this most unconscionable and delectably ill-fated politics of personal destruction without the bold, very public and shameless complicity of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills. In the end, these two wet-eared bootlicking reprobates and their dignity-bereft patron had to scurry shame-facedly, tail in-between legs, towards the very bottom of the porcine trough from which they had been voraciously feasting off the flesh and blood of their political opponents.

The preceding dastardly and passionately partisan shenanigans notwithstanding, Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey was properly speaking a fallible human who committed his fair share of blunders as a politician. But he was an astute, respectable and honorable politician and a decent human being, nevertheless.

I am a bona fide non-state-side member of the family at heart, which makes it extremely difficult for me to bear this huge, touching loss. That the current party-headquarters leadership crisis only became as apparently intractable and heart-wrenchingly traumatic as it has become, is largely because of dastardly factional attempts to undermine the credibility and integrity of Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey, cannot be gainsaid. That was how significant and indispensable Jake had become to the stature and fortunes of the New Patriotic Party.

Jake’s passing offers a prime opportunity for the New Patriotic Party’s headquarters stalwarts to their acts together and intently and poignantly spoil for victory come the November 2016 general election. Jake would have had it no other way, in spite of the nihilistically lurid intrigues and great anguish and disappointment that he was forced to endure.

Onukpa, Hedzolleh! Yaa Kashie Odwogbaan!!!

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs



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