By Desmond Darko (The Catalyst)

New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is a dying horse. His belligerent and warmongering posture on the political stage in recent times depicts exactly the last kick of the dying horse he is.

Akufo-Addo is on the verge of his demise as a leading political figure in Ghana. He is about to become irrelevant to Ghana’s political discourse both within the NPP and on the national stage. The little time he has on hand to make any impact, either positively or negatively, on Ghana’s politics, is between now and the 2012 elections, as he remains flagbearer of the largest opposition party in the country.

The NPP flagbearer’s only hope of hanging on a bit longer on the political stage lies in the unlikely event that he becomes the president of Ghana by emerging winner of the 2012 presidential election. But from the look of things the future looks bleak for him. So he has chosen the path of bellicosity, throwing in anything irrespective of the repercussions for this country.

In assessing Nana Akufo-Addo’s conduct in recent times, one could not agree more with Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah’s reference to him as Nana Patapaa.

For Nana Akufo-Addo, he is either voted president by the Ghanaian electorate in the 2012 presidential election or the whole country goes down with him. This is because another defeat of him will mean his political death- a sad end to his obsessive childhood ambition to become president of Ghana.

It was against this backdrop that in his ethnically-lased violence speech to party supporters in Koforidua recently, the NPP flagbearer stressed the need for the NPP to win the next elections “at all costs.” He then veered into a dangerous area of ethnic politics as he sought to insight Akans against other ethnic groups in the country. ‘

‘All die be die’ for Akufo-Addo, considering his reference to Etiwa as an example, simply means the Akans should begin to kill and be ready to be killed in order for him to become president. Political logic at its bloodiest!!!
In other words, the NPP flagbearer is saying that the end justifies the means. He believes he cannot become president on the basis of the sanctity of the ballot box. Other unconventional methods would have to be employed for him to have leverage and this in his warped thinking includes ethnic war.
In his recent article in defence of the ‘all die be die’ mantra of Akufo-Addo, the 2008 Communications Director of the Akufo-Addo campaign, Dr Arthur Kennedy made an allusion that as a country, we missed a big bullet in the 2008 elections. He went further to ask if we are expecting to go through that experience again in 2012.

In the 2008 elections, one thing became absolutely evident. That is, Nana Akufo-Addo and his bunch of desperate Danquah-Busia politicians did everything in a bid to win the elections ‘at all costs.’

With defeat staring at Nana Akufo-Addo who was the NPP presidential candidate after the second round, Chief Justice Theodora Georgina Wood on a statutory holiday secretly empanelled a court to hear an application filed by Atta Akyea on behalf of NPP and Akufo-Addo in seeking to place an injunction on the Tain presidential bye-election, which was to serve as the final determinant of the winner of the presidential election between Nana Akufo-Addo and President John Evans Atta Mills.

It is true that we dodged that big bullet that Dr Arthur Kennedy indicated. But it is also true that that big bullet was triggered by the recklessness of people from his own party, the NPP, and their cronies, talking of the Atta Akyeas and the Georgina Woods who plotted to subvert the will of the people, some of whom admittedly were caught on tape discussing how to topple the constitutional order in Atta Akyeas office.

In the secretly recorded conversation, Atta Akyea could be overheard clearly saying he was coached by his sister-in-law, Chief Justice Georgina Wood on what to do in court in order to sway the judge to his favour.

He also said he was disappointed in the judge saying he thought the judge was one of them (NPP). This was after the judge threw out the dangerous application because he saw wisdom in the argument of level-headed lawyers like Mr Tony Lithur, Mr Raymond Atuguba and others who in the name of ‘friends of the court’ stormed the court upon a tipoff and soundly argued against the subversive move by Akufo-Addo’s Atta Akyea and the rest of them.

On that same tape, Atta Akyea and his nation-wrecking gang set in motion a grand scheme to export dead bodies from the Komfo-Anokye Teaching Hospital morgue in Kumasi to be littered in the Volta region to serve as exhibits for the NPP to claim its party agents were killed in the region. This was to be used as a basis for demanding from the Electoral Commission to annul the election results from parts of the region and that would have made Akufo-Addo the winner of the election in the second round.
Again on the tape, the voice of Alhaji Alhassan Yakubu, former MP for Yendi and Minister of the Interior at the time the Ya Na and 40 others were massacred in broad daylight stated that the NPP would not relinquish power to the NDC. The worst case scenario he posited would be power-sharing.
The NPP claims it has documented evidence of violence perpetrated against its agents by NDC supporters in the party’s stronghold, the Volta region. What the NPP is conveniently refusing to talk about is the evidence published by CODEO, the respected local independent election observers, who concluded on the basis of empirical evidence that the Ashanti and Eastern regions- strongholds of the NPP- topped the violence sheet in the 2008 elections.
In other words, there has been massive violence perpetrated against NDC supporters in the strongholds of the NPP. Let’s not forget that these two were the only regions won by Akufo-Addo and his NPP in the last elections. The NDC won in the rest 8 regions.

If we are to be guided by the subversive conduct of Akufo-Addo and his henchmen in the 2008 elections, then we do not need a soothsayer to predict what this bunch of desperados are capable of doing in the 2012 elections. This is especially because Akufo-Addo is at his wits end politically and the only survival tint he has left is to become the president of Ghana. In other words, it is a ‘do or die’ affair for him at this critical moment of his political life to either make it to the presidency or forever forget it, hence his proclamation of “all die be die.”

A horse does not die without kicking hard for once for the very last time. NPP’s Nana Patapaa I is certainly kicking for the last time before his childhood ambition of becoming president of Ghana fizzles out in his eyes into total oblivion in the 2012 elections.