February 22, 2014

Dear Sir/Madam,

Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe is the loudest bigot in Ghana – Please stop him!

Ghanaians and NPP members have by now become accustomed to hearing nonsense from Dr. Nyaho Tamakloe. If you are not familiar with some of his baseless and frankly moronic comments, let me introduce you to a few of the headlines that have been associated with him opening his mouth. “Don’t blame Mahama for economic crises – Nyaho Tamakloe” Citifmonline.com, “I am untouchable in NPP – Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe” SpyGhana.com, “No one in NPP can gag me – Nyaho-Tamakloe” Joyfmonline.com, “Let’s be bold in tackling ethnic skewing in NPP – Nyaho-Tamakloe” Graphic online, and the list of headlines goes on and on…
As Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe embarks on his destructive crusade of the NPP, I’m yet to read a cogent and coherent response from anybody within the NPP leadership. The leadership by not facing him squarely and calling his bluff have lent a certain credence to this self-seeking man whose only claim to fame was his presence at the founding of NPP. It is about time that the party grew a pair and dealt with Nyaho Tamakloe like they should before we the people who believe in the ideals of the party and not people take him on. Nyaho Tamakloe’s modus operandi is simple. Cry victim and then wreck the NPP from within! This explains why you see him trying to say people are seeking to gag him or kick him out of the party. He says these things and effectively gag everybody else who had a response to him simply because responding to his nonsense will be construed as gagging him. He says nobody can kick him out of the party but proceeds to say things that kick others out of the party. This cannot be allowed to continue. Nobody wants to be associated with a group that has so much negativity within it especially if people like Nyaho Tamakloe are making them feel like somebody else is going to treat them like outsiders.
What is bothering me most about Nyaho Tamakloe’s nonsense is that none of them are grounded in reality. None of them is fact based, none of them is logical and none of them seeks to develop the party beyond he Tamakloe’s perception of it. Do I need to demonstrate that that man’s comments and concerns are stupid and not grounded in reality? Let’s start from his comments on the falling value of the Ghanaian Cedi. He has been quoted by Citi fm as saying “it happened in Rawlings’ time. The cedi was devalued over a thousand times, Kufuor came on board, he was able to get things moving properly within a short time…unfortunately when he was leaving, the cedi was again nose diving.” Reading the entire statement from him I thought for a moment that was made by some ignorant illiterate somewhere. I was expecting to hear him say the value of the cedi fell by 25% in one month because of this, this and that. Not just to ask Ghanaians to throw our hands in the air is despair and accept it as the way it should be. And believe that the same government that created the problem will solve it with the same thinking that they had when they created it in the first place. Not only this, he has become so oblivious as to why we elect and choose our leaders. We elect and choose leaders to solve problems! You don’t want us to blame John Mahama for failing to solve a problem that you yourself have admitted exists? What a sycophant! Do you want me to be blamed? Or you just want to be like them and blame the dwarfs or the gods?
On ethnic balance in the NPP, Nyaho Tamakloe went to town tagging and castigating everybody about the composition of the vetting committee of the party when in actual fact he knew next to nothing about it. Before writing this piece about him, I did the simplest of things. I looked for all his comments, I read them. This is what normal people do. Couldn’t Dr. Nyaho Tamakloe avail himself with at least the simplest fact of the composition of the vetting committee? Now my focus is not on him getting this basic fact wrong but on this idea of ethnic balance in the NPP. I hope Nyaho Tamakloe is not calling for the party to bypass its criteria and qualification requirements in filling party positions. I’m a Northerner, a proud one at that. I will however be damned if I accepted any position anywhere in the world simply because I was a Northerner. Nyaho Tamakloe and his types have to start realizing that Northerners are not inferior in any way shape or form. We have the same qualifications and standards like anybody else anywhere in the world. When opportunities arise, we can compete for, and win them strictly based on our qualifications and merits. We do not need to have special criteria developed for us. Maybe he wants it for himself but we want to hold our heads up high and claim we won and deserve our positions by virtue of our hard work and not because Nyaho Tamakloe had mercy on us. We Northerners do not need any pity from Nyaho Tamakloe and people like him. People like Nyaho Tamakloe are the real tribalists. They are those who think being in one tribe or the other automatically puts you in a disadvantage. It doesn’t! Northerners who want to lead or be considered serious members of the NPP have to work for it. They have to be willing to bring with them support from the North. They have to be able to convince everybody that they are capable of competently doing the jobs for which they are applying. Nothing is going to be handed to anybody simply because of where they come from and as a Northerner I will never let that be a consideration for who I support for anything. NPP is perhaps the only party in Ghana that has stuck to a Northern- Southern partnership when we are selecting our Presidential Candidates. This has to mean something to people like Nyaho Tamakloe. If you went through the NPP Chairmanship list, our history will show the balance we have had as a party in filling that position. All Nyaho Tamakloe has to do is research and read and stop clinging onto this founding member nonsense. He only happened to be around when the party was being formed. He never earned it and should stop using it as a claim to fame.
I, like many people I know happen to be part of the NPP not because we were born into it nor have our family members been known NPP people. We believed in the ideals of the party and will defend those ideals at all times against anybody that will threaten them. We are not in the NPP because of individuals! At the time that I was making my decision to join the NPP and actually be part of campaign 2000, I didn’t know Nyaho Tamakloe or anybody else. All I knew was that, this was a party that was founded on the principles of “Development in freedom”. It was founded on the principles of “Free enterprise”, the principles of freedom and liberty for all Ghanaians and stood for the principles of fundamental human rights for all Ghanaians. As a kid in Tamale, I watched people march on the streets for the basic of all freedoms. The freedom of speech! I watched them go to battle unarmed against the armed tyrannical government of the PNDC to ensure that Ghanaians including myself had a right to vote and choose our leaders. I agree with these ideals completely. They are not negotiable to some of us. People like Nyaho Tamakloe will come and go. Some might come to NPP and fail to adhere to these principles and it will be our job to bring them back to the basics. It will be our responsibility to bring them back to what matters to us. At this point, I personally have my doubts on whether Nyaho Tamakloe believes in these founding principles. He must be challenged to demonstrate that he does. Otherwise we can all wish him goodbye to his party of choice. And yes Mr. Tamakloe, can be kicked out of the NPP if not by the leadership but by we the masses! He should not think for a minute that we the people are going to sit by and watch unconcerned as he embarks on his personal selfish motives to wreck our party. We simply will not let him! I will not be afraid to start and lead a drive to cleanse our party off Nyaho Tamakloe. Just as he has the right to criticize the party as a so-called founding member, we too have the right to take him on and call his bluff as major stake holders of the party. He has outlived his usefulness in the party and we have a future to protect. No old spent horse will be allowed to derail our future. Not even Nyaho Tamakloe!
In sum, Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe must be informed that today’s NPP is not the same NPP he joined or was a founding member of. It has become a modern political party with many stakeholders. All of our stakes are the same and he Nyaho Tamakloe is no better than any other member of the party. We all have equal say in what happens to the party. He will therefore be criticized and attacked just like he does to others and the party and he too cannot gag anybody. He too has to suffer the same pain and consequences he is subjecting other party members to by his almost daily trash that he spews. If Nyaho Tamakloe wants to be respected and treated like a party member or is it a founding member?, he will have to acquaint himself with the party structures and guidelines on resolving disagreements. It is my hope and prayer that he heeds this early advice and either learn to be a team player or quit the party all together. If he fails to take either option available to him, then he should prepare to face the wrath of other NPP members who have a future to protect.
Thanks for reading!

Tanko B. Adamu
Minnesota, USA
Tankobalik@yahoo.co.uk