By Okoampa-Ahoofe Kwame

A major part of the awarding of the doctoral degree has to do with the recipient’s ability to critically and independently think and decide for him- / herself. And so I was quite flabbergasted by Dr. Emmanuel Osei-Akyeampong’s very public and scandalous allegation that while he held the post of Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), the recently retired Moderator of the Church, Prof. Emmanual Martey, instigated him to verbally assault the General-Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia.

Dr. Osei-Akyeampong, who was dismissed from his PRO’s post in June 2013, on charges of fraud and official misrepresentations, now says that he had been prompted by Rev. Martey to call Mr. Asiedu-Nketia a drunkard, because the latter had dared to challenge the authorities of the Church for mordantly carping then-Electoral Commission’s Chair Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan for creating some 45 additional constituencies and parliamentary seats with barely four months before the 2012 general election (See “Professor Martey Influenced Me to Insult Asiedu-Nketia – Ex. Presby PRO” 8/31/16).

It is quite obvious that Dr. Osei-Akyeampong deserved his jack-booting from the Headquarters of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. What piqued my interest, though, is the possible motive behind Dr. Osei-Akyeampong’s rather belated decision to come public with his quite damning accusation against the former spiritual leader of the PCG. Could it possibly be that the much younger man is presently strapped for cash, and realizing that it is that time of the year and season when the key NDC operatives go on a splurging spree, in exchange for votes, the dismissed PCG’s PRO decided to put his empty bucket under the NDC’s public stand-pipe?

And also, just precisely why does the accuser expect that the barb-tongued and pathologically irreverent wiry man popularly known as General Mosquito would take his apology any seriously, being that Dr. Osei-Akyeampong does not seem to be his own man or a man who is capable of thinking and deciding for himself? For instance, it could well be that seeing him desperate and in dire economic straits, someone who knew that the dismissed PCG’s PRO was woefully bereft of the capacity to think for himself advised this evidently shameless “apologist” to make groveling overtures of endearment to General Mosquito, in hopes of being fed sumptuous crumbs from the NDC’s dinner table.

In other words, the man clearly lacks credibility and self-respect and dignity. Which also impels the critically thinking and levelheaded observer to wonder about the criteria by which highly placed officials of the PCG, such as the Church’s PROs, are selected. There is absolutely no doubt that a critical review of the process by which senior Church officials are selected, appointed or elected needs to be promptly conducted.

On the question of the creation of the 45 additional constituencies and new parliamentary seats by Dr. Afari-Gyan, the PGC leadership’s genuine concern was that such decision was patently ill-advised and was likely to complicate matters verging on the credibility of Election 2012, whose murky outcome eventually did end up at the Supreme Court, by the way. Mr. Asiedu-Nketia’s characteristically lame riposte was that the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had also permitted Dr. Afari-Gyan and the EC to create 30 new constituencies and parliamentary seats in 2004. The fact of the matter, however, is that the entire decision was constitutionally the especial preserve of Dr. Afari-Gyan. What the deviously sophistic NDC General-Secretary had also conveniently ignored was the fact that the creation of the 30 new constituencies and parliamentary seats had been done within a temporal span that strictly conformed with the express stipulation of the country’s 1992 Constitution.

That was not quite the case in the lead-up to the 2012 general election, which prompted even former President John Agyekum-Kufuor to bitterly complain that the creation of these new constituencies did not appear to have been done in good faith. Back then, Dr. Osei-Akyeampong is widely reported to have chided Mr. Asiedu-Nketia for being woefully short on ratiocination. Four years on, the dismissed PCG’s PRO now claims that he was merely acting at the behest and in the interest of Moderator Martey. Which, in effect, translates into the fact that the dismissed PCG’s PRO was actually the one who must have spoken under the influence, as it were, and not Mr. Asiedu-Nketia, his target of vituperation. Who said ours is not a very interesting world?

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