Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a hoot who clinched what post in the internal party elections of Ghana’s largest opposition political machine, to wit, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

This time around, though, the decision by the coup-plotting and ever-scheming Mr. Koku Anyidoho, the rabidly divisive Anlo-Ewe chauvinist, to irreverently and quixotically challenge and literally squash arguably the most dynamic and successful General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress got me interested enough, if only because I sincerely wanted to see the politically scurrilous Trokosi Nationalist put in his place, that is, permanently chucked to the margins of NDC’s political culture and effectively banished from this bloody Rawlings-minted political party’s Kokomlemle headquarters.

And now, it well appears that The Mosquito is on his way to achieving exactly what the proverbial doctor ordered. At 62 years old, the Seikwa, Brong-Ahafo, native sports the sort of résumé that Mr. Anyidoho ought to be working his butts off for the next 20 years, at least, before he could proudly boast of achieving. You see, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia was too powerful and experienced in the rough-and-tumble game of politics for a decidedly primitive and irredeemably wicked and rude upstart like Mr. Anyidoho who, by the way, has been perennially, albeit vacuously, tugging at the tails of his Major-General father’s military uniform to beat. About the only time when this brazen social climber’s political career seemed to be sailing smoothly and even beginning to fly Ghana’s aviation firmaments, was when the late President John Evans Atta-Mills made the fatal mistake of naming Mr. Anyidoho as his Communications Director. That was also when the Wheta, Volta Region, native began feeling too big for his breeches.

He would publicly and disdainfully state, without mincing words or the slightest of hesitation, that so unprepossessing was the visage of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor that the mere sight of the two-term Fourth-Republican leader made him want to vomit. He would, of course, be asked by his more refined and urbane boss to promptly, publicly and unreservedly apologize for such an inexcusable faux-pas. Well, it took quite a long time, but that was the beginning of the end of Mr. Anyidoho’s meteoric political career. And, oh, I forgot to note that not only had General Mosquito, as Mr. Asiedu-Nketia is popularly known, served as an NDC-Member of Parliament for Sunyani-East, in the Brong-Ahafo capital, for a dozen years, The Singing and Stinging Mosquito had also served as Deputy Defense Minister under strongman Jerry John Rawlings.

I also don’t know the quiddities of The Mosquito’s real relationship with the blood-guzzling Chairman Rawlings, although I am inclined to believe the oblique word of Mr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah that any candidate capable of winning a major party post ought to be in the good books of the legendary Dracula Couple, in particular in the good books of the former Flight-Lieutenant of the Ghana Airforce. You see, it is not farfetched or a stretch to expect The Mosquito and the G-A-F’s former pilot to flock together, in spite of the fact that the Generalissimo of the Sogakope and Anloga Mafia once quipped that if the Pesky Mosquito was not darn too ugly, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia could one day very well gun for the Presidency. I bet it is a bit darn too early to count The Mosquito out of the Big League.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net