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

Too many of his deputy ministerial appointees are so intellectually, morally and culturally bankrupt that one begins to wonder whether answering to the nickname or appellation of “Mr./Ms. Stupid” is not a salient criterion for receiving a presidential invite to play second-bananas to a substantive cabinet appointee. This, of course, is in no way to suggest that the senior cabinet appointees are themselves any remarkably better than their lieutenants.

Anyway, his existence and presence in the Mills-Mahama cabinet came to my attention when Mr. Kobby Acheampong was reported to have insulted a prominent member of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) by calling the latter “Kookooase Kuraseni” (to wit: “Cocoa-farm tending rustic/savage”) or some such invective. From then on, Motor-Mouth Kobby hit a downward spiral. This, however, is no anomaly, when one painfully reckons the fact that it has been a virtual, precipitous freefall for the government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) since President John Evans Atta-Mills assumed the reins of governance in January 2009.

In his latest contretemps, we are told that the Deputy Interior Minister was driving at the ungodly speed of 90Km/Hr in a 50Km/Hr zone on a section of the Accra-Cape Coast road when he was stopped at a mounted police checkpoint. This is where the narrative gets somewhat fuzzy. We are, however, told that of the eight police officers on guard at the post, one had shouted “Stupid man!” at Mr. Acheampong who has, on more than several occasions, more than amply demonstrated that, indeed, he goes by the behavioral designation of a stupid man. This is also the clinical reprobate who once, reportedly, impugned the sanity and intelligence of the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (See “Mills Must Sack ‘Notorious’ Kobby Acheampong – Sir John” MyJoyOnline.com 10/5/11).

In the wake of the aforesaid incident, Mr. Acheampong allegedly whipped out his cell-phone and demanded that the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) exact a proverbial pound of flesh, whereupon all eight police officers were rudely bundled into a vehicle and driven to the national police headquarters in Accra, instead of the regional headquarters in Cape Coast, for interrogation. Talk of ministerial abuse of power!

Anyway, at the time of this writing (10/10/11), the officer allegedly fingered as having verbally assaulted Mr. Acheampong was under custodial arrest pending judicial arraignment, while the other seven officers had been, for the time being, cleared of any involvement in the verbal confrontation and yet, curiously, granted bail and charged with the relatively lesser crime of official misconduct! What the latter apparently capricious sanctioning of the seven police officers implies is that, perhaps, the most professional approach towards their duty ought to have been for these officers to have allowed Mr. Acheampong to wreak havoc or carnage on the highway and then have the Deputy Interior Minister awarded the Grand Order of the Volta for his “heroic” road kill.

Predictably, it was Deputy Information Minister and Kobby Acheampong bona fide, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, who first impugned the motives of those among the thunderous chorus of Ghanaian citizens calling for the immediate removal of the Deputy Interior Minister. In the patently reprehensible opinion of Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa, any attempt by President Mills to dismiss the rambunctious Deputy Interior Minister would be tantamount to “capricious high-handedness.”

Maybe Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa ought to be reminded by a more studious observer of the rampant and shameless public misbehavior of Mr. Acheampong, that there is absolutely nothing “capricious” about the removal of a ministerial deputy appointee with an established pattern and track-record of the abject abuse of the very people of whose collective interests and good he was sworn into service. Likewise, there is absolutely nothing “high-handed” about the prompt removal of Mr. Acheampong, especially if President Mills is really serious about the need to restore civility to executive public conduct and with it, the credibility of the president himself!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###