Sometime this year, the NPP established prayer camps in the country and since then has been advocating for members to patronize these camp to pray to God so we Ghanaians can live a life of righteousness and wish that God will help the party to win the 2012 elections. Great.

Many months after the establishment of this pray camps, the leadership of the party in response to Wikileaks’ exposure of Akuffo Addo’s drug use which was in the first place made public by members of the NPP during the 2008 and last year’s primary elections, has decided to blackmail President Mills with information on his health and rumours on the Vice President’s supposed sexual escapades.

The notice of blackmail was served on Kennedy Agyapong’s Oman FM and Net2 Television by the Youth Organizer of the NPP, Anthony A. Karbo and the Managing Editor of the Searchlight newspaper, Kenneth Agyei Kuranchie, last Monday, the 10th of October, 2011 during a newspaper review programme hosted by Fiifi Boafo. Mr. Karbo warned that the NPP will henceforth; match the NDC boot-for-boot because the party has resolved not to allow Nana Addo to be reduced to a punching bag.

The bible says that belief in God is not the same as following God. Faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead. ... You believe that there is one God? Good. Even the demons believe that -- and shudder" (James 2:15-19). For the worship of God is not about going to church and singing songs or praying. It is about recognizing your sinful ways and repenting. It is about realizing that the way you go about doing things is not good and asking for forgiveness and after that determining to do things in a way that will please God. What this means is that, church going without a change in character is a waste of time, and I should add that change in character should be manifested in how you respect and treat your fellow man.

In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus said that the father God gave his prodigal son his share of the riches that he so wanted to spend on his own without sharing with his siblings and fellow countrymen. The parable also made it clear that the father God still had enough money to send people to go look for his son if he so wished. It is said that he will go outside every morning and stare at the horizon to see if his son was coming back home. He loved and missed his son but he did not make a move to go and search for him because the bible tells us that the son was not ready to inherit his kingdom. The parable says that after the son went through all the great hardships and was forced to search within his sole to see how great the life he had abandoned and left behind was and really regretted and went home to seek for forgiveness, the father God welcomed him back to the child’s own kingdom his father has prepared for him in the first place.

The lesson is that God has given us our own free will and we can decide to seek him or not but the commandments say clearly that “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain”.

NPP cannot establish pray groups seeking the will of God and at the same time make blackmail the centerpiece of their political campaign. You are either hot for God or cool for the Satan. Semi hot and semi cool is anathema to the will of God. Check Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. No matter how NPP will rationalize this, these two positions are contradictory. Reader, are you with me so far? You cannot belittling prayer and at the same time launch attacks on your unbelieving opponents based on rumours and innuendos, no matter how you have suffered the same fate; for vengeance is God’s.

Party politics is dirty and campaigning for elections demands a great deal of integrity and restrain. Nobody has forced the NPP to do that. In fact the history of Ghana and the little we have seen from the desperation of NPP and Akuffo Addo to win political power as exemplified in the “ All die be die” pronouncement accompanied by their primitive tribal and religious sentiments show that the large following of NPP cannot uphold the tenets of Christian teachings. That is O.K with Ghanaians because we know them and we know their capabilities and limitations and we know that we are all sinners. What we hate and which if they don’t check will become their undoing as usually is their hypocritic and holier-than-attitude.

Jesus was a smart guy. The Son of God part aside, he got politics and rhetoric right. When his enemies tried to trap him, Jesus didn't counter the Pharisees by saying that their laws were wrong or outdated or use blackmail. Instead, he simply used their own arguments and purported motives to call them to a higher purpose and truer service to God. And in so doing he exposed their hypocrisy and true motives to the people. In the New Testament, there is only one sin that gets the divine death penalty and that was hypocrisy of Ananias. Now, before some of you gleefully take the some NPP member’s hypocrisy as proof that all NPP members are hypocrites, the fact is that most of them are not and are not responsible for the shameful political propaganda emanating from Nana Akuffo Addo’s campaign committee. But that is exactly why highlighting the committee’s hypocrisy on this issue is so important.

If the NPP has been consigned to opposition, it is not because it is not a great and formidable party capable of forming a government of Ghana, but it is solely because of their INVOLEMENT IN USING INSULT AS A CAMPAIGN STRATEGY; IN THEIR VINDICTIVENESSS; IN THEIR EXTREME ARROGANCE AND THEIR SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT; AND IN THEIR REFUSAL TO CONFRONT THEIR OWN INSULT AND PROPAGANDA AGAINST NANA AKUFFO ADDO DURING THEIR PRIMARY ELECTIONS COMPAING THAT HAS COME TO BITE THEM

I am an Akyem-born Ghanaian and would under normal circumstances have wished that my brother Nana Addo is the president of Ghana. But thanks to Kwame Nkrumah, J.B Danquah and Jerry John Rawlings, I feel more as a Ghanaian and African than my more basic primitive tribal roots. Don’t get me wrong, my father was the Odau Apagyahene of Akyem Otwereso of the Akyem Abuakwa traditional area and I will gladly ascent to my thrown when my time comes and do what is expected of me to make my people proud and to leave a legacy for the Akyems. But I will never use my origin and attachment to my roots as a way to divide Ghanaians or to hide behind my stupidly acquired habits such as drug use that is abhorrent to the integrity and prosperity of my country. Never.

You see, the Busia-Danquah-Dombo tradition from which the NPP emerged is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, political traditions in Ghana politics. They initiated the fight that finally led Ghana to independence. Since then they have contributed immensely to democratization of the country. They are fierce defenders of human rights and constitutional rule and have led the struggle that has ensured that Ghanaians have the opportunity to enjoy these essential human necessities. They have over the years served as the counter balance to the liberal and socially-oriented Nkrumah-Rawlings tradition. Every Ghanaian no matter their political persuasion respects the party as a pillar in Ghanaian politics.

However, sometimes, the party's way of doing things border on sinfulness. In their determination to win power, they see every election as a war with their “enemies” that must be won and most of the times, they use extreme tactics to “destroy” these enemies. In recent times some sections of the party have come to solve any form of confrontation with some form of insult, fight and now blackmail.

The party has a large constituency that is well educated and others that are sometimes very cunning. Though this constituency is in the minority, the party leadership has not done anything to stop their activities. This inaction comes out as condoning by the party hierarchy, probably because they indirectly benefit from it. Some of the time some of their campaign tactics come out as discussions of personalities or attempts to tear opponents down. Instead of discussing issues, most of the time some members of the party get too emotional and resort to insult and character assassination of individuals. Most of us have come to know that some party functionaries sometimes create artificial crisis and blame it on their opponents to score political points. These tactics are beneath a great tradition of the Danquah/Busia.

Dear Nana Addo, if you think that you are a great son of Akyem Abuakwa and the Akans of Ghana and for that matter, a deserving son of Ghana who is entitled to be the president of Ghana, show some leadership and prevent the use of the sickness of President Atta Mills as a weapon for you to score political points. As the presidential candidate of NPP, you are now the leader of the party and we Akyems want you to show the character we brought you up with.

We are watching.

Kwame Yeboah. gyeboah@harding.edu