Forget About the National Awards

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

We have all been flabbergasted by President Kufuor’s recent and abrupt decision to confer the highest national honor on the perennial Presidential Candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). Not that we don’t believe that Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, or any other Ghanaian citizen whom the President deems to be deserving of national accolades ought to be promptly begrudged the same, merely because the particular nominee subscribes to the “wrong” ideological school, or political camp, except that in this context the problem regards the critical and salient element of timing. (Of course, that part dealing with merit would be exposed for public scrutiny in due course).

Needless to say, the nomination of the opposition Presidential Candidate for the highest national honor, coming in a landmark year of general elections, in which a wholly new President will be elected to replace a lame-duck President Kufuor, could not have been more ill-timed. And, indeed, as hard as it is to swallow, he may not, in any way, have intended to hurt the auspicious chances of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to retaining power for both the good of the country’s democratic culture as well as the prosperity of the people at large but, ironically, this is exactly what Mr. Kufuor seems to be aiming for, at least in the opinion of most of the prominent members of the NPP.

We were, however, enthused by the fact that the first group among the ranks of the New Patriotic Party to impugn the motives of the President, in his patently bizarre bid to bestowing the highest national honor on Prof. Atta-Mills, was the Women’s Wing of the NPP, led by Ms. Asobayire. I love the name of the latter, because it invariably reminds yours truly of his good, old Asiakwa days, when we, the grandchildren of the Rev. T. H. Sintim, would bake tubers of yams, as well as cocoyams, scoop their inner cores, and generously insert a sumptuous sauce of canned sardines and palm-oil. And it is precisely for this reason that whenever I come across the name of Ms. Asobayire, I also wonder if, indeed, I have not wasted these twenty-and-odd years that I have spent in the United States, incessantly fighting against dyed-in-the-wool racists and their invidious requirement for me to establish beyond any iota of doubt (on their own terms, of course), both my humanity and my right to be granted the opportunity to practice a trade for which I am more than qualified and, especially, my right to be tenured and even promoted at the level of a community college. More about the latter battle, which I have been waging for the better part of a decade, later.

Indeed, what fascinated us more than all else, about the downright righteous complaint of the Asobayire Group, is the fact that the rank-and-file membership of the NPP Women’s Wing promptly and logically correlated the conferral of Ghana’s highest national honor with the patriotic and unreserved fight for the preservation and defense of human rights. Thus, as the Asobayire Group emphatically observed, both Prof. Atta-Mills’ opportunistic and sinister association with the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) and the former University of Ghana Law School professor’s lackluster performance, both as a bona fide member of the P/NDC as well as one-term “Vice”-President of Ghana, do not, in of themselves, warrant the gravity of the bestowal of the Order of the Star of Ghana (?)

To be frank with our dear readers, we have absolutely no interest, whatsoever, in such incontrovertibly comical, neocolonialist and Nineteenth-Centuryesque titles as THE ORDER OF CHICKEN POCKS; THE ORDER OF THE FAST-DIMMING MOON OF THE GOLD COAST; and THE ORDER OF THE VOLTA DAM AT CHORKOR-LANTEY.

In sum, if we are to create any imaginative and meaningful national accolades with which to honor our most distinguished citizens, let’s have more Afrocentric and germane accolades like THE ORDER OF NANA AMANINAMPONG; THE ORDER OF FANTEAKWA; THE ORDER KWAEBIBIREM; THE ORDER OF THE OSAGYEFO, OSEADEEYO, OTUMFUO NANA OSEI-TUTU AGYEMAN PREMPEH AMOATIA OFORI-ATTA PANYIN, and THE SHINING ROYAL SKIN-MAT OF GBEWAA AND MAMPRUGU YENDI…. We hope our dear readers get the drift of where we are coming from.

Needless to say, our present national accolades read more like some half-moth-eaten British hand-me-downs than accolades which any substantive and authentic Ghanaian leader would confer. Of course, we know the sort of unimaginative and apish mindset which created such neocolonialist contretemps; at this stale stage of the game, as it were, however, there is absolutely no need to rake over ashen coals.

The preceding notwithstanding, we also fully well know from last December’s NPP national convention, during which the Party’s Presidential Candidate was elected, that Mr. John (Kofi “Diawuo”) Agyekum-Kufuor is no fast friend of Nana Akufo-Addo’s. Even so, Election 2008 is no myopic contest of personalities; rather, what is at stake is the very destiny of the nation at large. In sum, Election 2008 is a momentous contest between the bounden preservation of the salutary rule of democracy and the unreserved protection of human rights, on the one hand; and the regressive and decadent rule of populist dictatorship, of the extortionate kind which Ghanaians reeled under from 1981 to 2000, under the sanguinary tenure of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), on the other.

Indeed, at the time of this writing, the Office of Ghana’s Presidency had issued an announcement postponing the date originally scheduled for the bestowal of the highest national accolade on Prof. Atta-Mills and some five other prominent Ghanaians, including incumbent Vice-President Alhaji Aliu Mahama. And here, we must sternly observe the fact that postponing the date for the award ceremonies merely adds insult to injury; for it only reaffirms President Kufuor’s evidently Unholy Alliance with the Atta-Mills camp which, in essence, speaks to the invidious intention of the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghanaian Republic to hand over power to Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills and the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) at all costs, come January 2009, it appears.

And on the latter score, we would like Mr. Kufuor to rest assured that his sinister motives had been quite clear to those of us who have avidly followed his political career over the course of the last 30-plus years. And here, also, it bears reminding our readers that Mr. Kufuor was the Provisional National Defense Council’s Secretary for Local Government when the three Ghanaian Supreme Court judges and the retired Army major were abducted and summarily executed on the instructions of then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings and Capt. Kojo Tsikata (see SIB Report).

In brief, President Kufuor’s incessant attempts at bending the democratic will of the people, particularly the will of the members of his own Party, to suit his own whims and caprices, are all very much in keeping with the mercurial temperament of the man.

And wasn’t it rather curious when, recently, for instance, in the wake of his blatantly capricious (some have actually described it as downright corrupt) decision to reinstate Dr. Richard W. Anane into his cabinet, Mr. Kufuor found his staunchest supporter in the NDC parliamentary opposition leader, Mr. Alban S. K. Bagbin? Curious, of course, when one also factors in the deafening disapproval registered by significant members of Mr. Kufuor’s own ruling New Patriotic Party, including a renowned relative of former Prime Minister K. A. Busia.

But what was even more interesting, if also quite belligerent, was Mr. Bagbin’s unprovoked attempt to use the occasion to cast aspersion at the integrity of Nana Akufo-Addo. Indeed, if President John Agyekum-Kufuor is looking to leave the infernal legacy of a Civil War in his wake, of the kind witnessed in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, otherwise known as the Biafran War, dear readers, guess what, Wofa Kofi “Diawuo” Agyekum-Kufuor is smack-dab on the right track!