By: Kobina Antobam

The adage that the appetite grows by what it feeds on easily explains the fickle but tenacious and ingrained cravings that have settled solidly in the culture and personalities of NPP stalwarts. “Everyone is wrong except our kind,” and “they are all out to get us,” seem to be the unfortunate self-serving crooked path set by this old but constantly renamed political party that is entrapped in its self-made tribal entanglement.

Inasmuch as the leading party members cannot arrest the escalating negativity in their midst in order to infuse some sense of civility into the party, the impulsion that propels the notorious “mate-me-ho” attitudes that make the NPP find fault with and accuse Ghanaians outside (and sometimes inside) their group for their own failings will continue to be the main contributing factor in their steady and rapid freefall.

Constantly subjecting notable Ghanaians to very serious accusations of partisan conspiracies, and demanding scrutiny, investigations, and confessions or denials from these prominent Ghanaians smacks of unbridled lunacy and sheer stupidity, and has caused many Ghanaians to wonder whether there is a pandemic of cognitive impairment or there is a hidden mental abnormality with a few of the party members. Unfortunately, repeated recessive and recidivistic relapses back into the notorious “mate-me-ho” braggadocio and unyielding stubbornness to justify this inured attitude boggles the mind and drives one to an extreme bewilderment.

Also, with its obstinacy in embracing the self-destructive stance of a narrow Akan tribal identity, which they are reluctant to shed, the NPP has proven historically that they thrive on harvesting, amassing, and harnessing an abundance of “enemies” and have demonstrated time and time again that they relish feeding fat on their “enemy” list in order to hide behind their biases to justify their failings.

This time, the core issue is the Asantehene. To be specific, the accusation that the Asantehene has suddenly become subversive to the NPP smacks of an unimaginable misnomer, crass stupidity, and indisputable derangement. Really, do they know something about the Asantehene’s political leanings that the rest of us are not aware of? And if it should ever cross the minds of NPP members, they should know already that the average Ghanaian would easily surmise that, considering that a great number of the NPP members are Asante, ex-President Kufuor himself an Asante, and the Asantehene an Asante too, it is extremely preposterous to attribute any complicity of bribery by the Asantehene in order to hurt the so-called self-proclaimed Akan-dominated NPP.

It should be noted, of course, that, punch drunk from the left jab by the late President Atta-Mills, and a lightning right wallop from President Mahama, and finished off with an uppercut by the Ghana Supreme Court, the NPP fault-finders are still dazed and are reeling and writhing under the dazzling floating circles of stars from the totality of unexpected repeated defeats of late, even when decades-old thrilling victories of our dear Kwame Nkrumah which caused a lasting immobility and almost permanent demise of the Elephant Party are not considered in this discussion. The sign is clear and indelibly etched in stone and there is nothing they can do about it. So they resort to baseless accusations, blame, and insults.

The recent accusation of the Asantehene that he conspired to undermine the outcome of the Ghana Supreme Court decision on the 2012 presidential elections seems to take the deviancy to a stratospheric extreme. To accuse the Asantehene of the offensive crime of bribing Supreme Court judges in order to affect the outcome of the election petition in favor of the NDC is like claiming that God is culpable, responsible, and guilty for all of our tribulations and misfortunes but never our good tidings.

Furthermore, in the case of the end result of the election petition, no one but each of the judges knows what prompted his or her decision. Also, with the exception of a few confused losers, there is nobody in Ghana, who has his or her normal mental faculties intact, who is seriously convinced that the Asantehene coerced the judges with huge sums of money to arrive at the now famous outcome.

It is even so sad that the self-deported NPP writers overseas, especially a very visible trio (two in the U.S. and one in England), have had the gull to throw the ball to the Manhyia Palace, asking the Asantehene to come clean and respond to those baseless mudslinging accusations. The Asantehene owes no one an explanation or denial of such demeaning and belittling accusations.

If they dare accuse the Asantehene of such a heinous crime, the strong temptation is there to also venture to muckrake and attribute the real ownership of the accusation to a particular group in the party. From all indications, it is easy to attribute this prosecutable libel to the Akyem faction of the NPP, who are still reeling from the repeated defeats of Akufo-Addo.

Over the years, since Ghanaians began to manage their own affairs, NPP and its predecessor parties (same party but under different names) have jealously cornered the market for amassing a good number of Ghanaians to hate. Their very first acquisition, who, they will forever cherish, is Kwame Nkrumah. Anytime NPP is backed into a corner, which they often find themselves, they reach in their treasure trove to nudge and poke at, rouse, and resurrect Kwame Nkrumah. Kwame Nkrumah, who was imbued with an exceptional ingenuity to run the affairs of the newly hatched Ghana, happens to be the slam dunk crutch for the NPP to be posthumously harangued and maligned in order to make the party look good. Unfortunately, they always end up smelling distasteful, miserable and repugnant.

Again, any time the party needs to wiggle itself out of an uncomfortable tight spot, they reach in the “enemy” sack and wake up Kwame Nkrumah and whip him as a distraction for their publicly disgraceful defeats and inadequacies. They love propping up dead Nkrumah and hoisting him loftily for puzzling gruesome bedevilment of an honorable human being that Nkrumah was and still is.

Here is good example. In August this year, in just about a week before the Supreme Court decision on the election petition was to be made public, an NPP member, Michael Ocquaye, who once or twice wanted hopelessly to be the NPP candidate for President, without being asked or provoked, needlessly woke up Kwame Nkrumah from his eternal sleep with a declaration that Kwame Nkrumah was not the founder of Ghana but that Joseph Danquah was.

What a crass and a failure in distraction! By being this stupid, Michael Ocquaye has succeeded in insulting the intelligence of Ghanaians, and has succeeded also in profaning with characteristic impudence of the “mate-me-hos” the established fond memories of the really, really upstanding honorable Kwame Nkrumah. Let us just consider the fallacy and total emptiness in Ocquaye’s reckless assertion and readily dismiss it to the trash bin where it rightfully belongs.

Inflicted, of course, with a trembling case of nervous premonition, it was so very clear that Michael Ocquaye and many NPP supporters were eerily aware of the upcoming decision of the Supreme Court and they were in dire need of the Nkrumah distraction, or a cop-out, to soothe the hurt, pain, and utter disappointment of being told finally that they had certainly lost the elections. So, Kwame Nkrumah, who happens to be the most valuable asset in their trove of “enemies,” had to be the appropriate fall guy to help pull the usual NPP wool over our eyes.

The next prominent personality in the NPP “enemy” list is the living former President, Jerry Rawlings. While occasionally cozying up to Rawlings for an outward display of partisan tolerance and a ruse of national unity, the NPP will regularly rake Rawlings over the coals for his participation in and contribution to Ghana’s recent national politics and, at the same time, ensure that he stays around as their number two asset and their runner-up whipping boy. Ex-President Rawlings, who is browbeaten constantly to no avail, is the same Ghanaian who transformed Ghana from repeated military dictatorships to the current democratic dispensation that we have come to take for granted.

Clinging tightly to their self-righteousness and their recently acquired individual economic opportunities and prosperity and the newfound acceptance in the country’s participation, many of these loud, clumsy, uncultured, young, spoon-fed, immature nouveau NPP politicians and so-called statesmen, refuse to accept the fact that it was J.J. Rawlings who transformed the country which before had a single short-wave radio station and a single television channel which had become the convenient enabler for coup plotters to the now expanded media outlets which have now allowed all of us, especially NPP loudmouths, to freely and safely vent and participate in the political affairs of the country.

Their publicly declared enemy list comprises not only individual Ghanaians but tribal groups, too. In the course of NPP’s existence, which includes its pre-independence beginnings, the pile up of enemies has progressed steadily, with the raking in of prominent Ghanaian personalities and a good number of recent middle-of-the-road Ghanaians the likes of Chief Justice Atuguba, Tsikata, and many others before them, up to the recent desperate escalation of sweeping whole tribes into their enemy bag by wanting to annihilate all Gas and Ewes. It is even common knowledge that, northern Ghanaians, especially, have been NPP’s butt of jokes, insults, and disdain for decades. What a tragicomedy of our times!

Now, when it comes to the Asantehene, it is critically important to caution the suspected source of this heinous and incomprehensible and reprehensible accusation of bribery to retract and distant itself far away from the Asantehene and turn instead to the tried and true culpable personality who has, with the abidance and connivance of his cabal, transformed the party to its current unsuccessful attempts to come to power.

It should be stated once more that, in the case of the Asantehene, the NPP should be told flat out that the Asantehene is an obvious total misfit in the party’s bag of hocus-pocus. By focusing on the Asantehene and others, the NPP has missed the mark widely. It would be best for this wounded party to cease misleading us and drawing our attention to odd Ghanaian figures for the party’s lack of progress and its internal squabbles, but lay the blame squarely on ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor. Though it is an unpalatable truth for staunch Kufuor worshippers to accept, it is still Mr. Kufuor, in just eight quick years, who has definitely spoiled it for the NPP.

Ex-President Kufuor and his government are the organization that almost institutionalized in-your-face uni-tribal segregation and uni-tribal superiority and discouraged economic fairness in any form of tribal integration. Kufuor’s systematic and purposeless assault on Kwame Nkrumah which is also the championed mantra of the party, the siphoning of the country’s coffers into narrow tribal private pockets, the greedy tribally-motivated EO Group oil deal, and the sudden enormity of prosperity of select Ghanaians; all of these together with other tribal policies of the Kufuor regime, have helped narrow the options open to Ghanaians whenever they go to the polls to elect presidents, parliamentarians, and other representatives. Recent memories, of course, die hard.

Ghanaians are also well aware that during Kufuor’s hegemonic reign, it was all about Kufuor, his self-awarded medals, his pocket book and the pocket book of a tribally select few; and, in those eight years of NPP, Ghanaians became the witnesses of a blatantly disgusting display of tribal self-absorption, self-indulgence, and governance by a single tribe’s traditional past. So, leave Nkrumah alone, leave Atuguba alone, leave Rawlings alone, retract your accusations against the Asantehene, especially, and point your accusatory fingers in the direction of Mr. Kufuor. He is the guilty one. He is the cause of Akufo-Addo’s inability to win national elections.

Good day.