By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 2, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

He is quite on point when the Christian Council of Ghana’s Rev.-Dr. Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong says that the peace and stability of the country is far more important than the country’s two major political parties (“Ghana’s Peace More Important than NPP-NDC Rivalry – Christian Council” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 1/2/15). What is not true is the General-Secretary of the Christian Council’s smug assertion that the existence of Ghana, as we know it, far precedes both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Listening to the patently false pontifications of the fanatical operatives of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP), one gets the same erroneous impression. In reality, it was the ideological ancestors of the New Patriotic Party, in the main, Messrs. J. B. Danquah and George “Paa” Grant, and the staunch associates and followers of the latter, of the erstwhile United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), who actually hatched the entire idea of the corporate establishment of an independent modern nation by the ancient and historic name of Ghana.

Indeed, I have often likened the relationship between the breakaway Nkrumah-led proto-Convention People’s Party – the real and original CPP – and the operatives of what eventually became known as the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-led United Party (UP), to a chef who had his most delicious and sumptuous food taken away from him at gunpoint by a heavily armed hungry vagabond. Nkrumah, of course, was that hungry vagabond.

At any rate, what leaders like Rev- Opuni-Frimpong – both religious and secular – ought to be studiously focused on is the salutary enhancement of social justice in the country. In other words, as an intellectual and, one also presumes, a scholar, Dr. Opuni-Frimpong ought to probing the factors responsible for the intense rivalry between the ruling faux-socialist National Democratic Congress and the liberal-democratic New Patriotic Party. And on the latter count, of course, one has upfront in mind the decision by the Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei-chaired Electoral Commission (EC) not to recompile a new National Voters’ Register (NVR) in the hectic lead-up to the 2016 general election, even after it had been presented with overwhelming forensic evidence indicating that the current NVR has been irreparably compromised, is one that sets one’s teeth on edge.

This strategically and politically unsound decision may well lead to what this writer has personally termed as THE ROAD TO KIGALI (The interested reader may want to visit the files of my column in the archives of Modernghana.com, which would shortly be made available on my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs). In short, it cannot be gainsaid that the complex concatenation of events that led us, as a country, to the rancorous level where we presently find ourselves did not begin today. And I am often embarrassed by the deviously convenient manner in which leaders like Rev. Opuni-Frimpong have touched on matters such as the one at hand.

Not quite long ago, for instance, Dr. Opuni-Frimpong had the temerity to publicly assert that Ghanaians stopped applying their critical-thinking faculties shortly after the auspicious overthrow of the culturally and politically stultifying and creatively withering Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party regime. We hope he was not blinkered by this sort of lethargic and downright indolent mindset when he made the remarks attributed to him by the national media.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs.