“For a fact, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom knows very little about the history of his home region, Central Region, and knows [even] very [more?] little about the history of his KEEA constituency, ‘hence the mockery he is making of his ignorance’” (Internal quotation marks added).
I am not sure exactly how one makes a mockery of one’s ignorance, as opposed to oneself, by one’s brazen display of crass ignorance; but the preceding quote appeared in an official propaganda document released by the office of Mr. John Evans Atta-Mills, presidential candidate of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). The document was signed by a Mr. Koku Anyidoho, the official “in-charge” of the communications apparatus of the handpicked NDC drum-major.
In the main, the afore-referenced document rightly and roundly carps Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, presidential candidate of the rump Convention People’s Party (CPP), for cavalierly presuming national governance to be almost wholly about the primitive practice of nepotism; the Atta-Mills document was in riposte to an alleged assertion by the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirim Member of Parliament to the morally blistering effect that during the four years that Mr. Atta-Mills was Vice-President of Ghana (from 1996-2000), the P/NDC presidential candidate did virtually nothing for the people of the Central Region, the home region of both presidential candidates.
What, over all, is most fascinating about the P/NDC propaganda document is the stunning fact of its emphatic confirmation of the widely acknowledged fact that during its twenty-year stranglehold on the people of Ghana the P/NDC, indeed, did absolutely nothing for its defenseless captives, or the very people whom this pseudo-revolutionary party self-righteously claims to have heroically rescued from the cormorant tentacles of regimes characterized by abject corruption and immitigable decadence.
Indeed, we decided to excerpt the quotation at the beginning of this article in order to firmly drive home to our readers the shameful fact of the P/NDC having actually regressed both the standard and quality of Ghana’s hitherto sterling educational system between 1981 and 2000. For if, indeed, such a linguistically bumbling media operative as Mr. Koku Anyidoho was the very best communications director that Mr. Atta-Mills could find all across the length and breadth of Ghana, then one readily begins to have an eerie sense of the kind and quality of governance in store for the Ghanaian electorate, should the latter commit the unpardonable crime and fatal error of returning the P/NDC to power.
Another part of the P/NDC agitprop document reads: “As it is very clear that Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom is unaware of it, the Office of the NDC Leader wishes to bring it to his attention that when Professor Atta Mills took the oath of office as Vice President, he swore to be Vice President of Ghana, and not Vice President of the Central Region. ¶ As such, as Head of the Economic Management Team, Vice President Atta Mills focused on an equitable distribution of the nation’s resources and was not interested in a tunnel-vision style of leadership pivoted around a concept of nepotism that could have created unnecessary tension and in an extreme case, led to civil strife” (Ghanaweb.com 3/26/08).
Well, as we documented several weeks ago, “nepotism,” indeed, uniquely characterized the political agenda of the P/NDC (see my article titled “Kenya Has Already Happened In Ghana, Stupid!” Ghanaweb.com; also Modernghana.com). From appointments to such key positions of public trust as Foreign Affairs, Finance and Economic Planning, Justice, National Security, United Nations Ambassador, Director of Petroleum, Army Commander and Army Chief of Staff…and the list goes on and on and on. If, indeed, the overwhelming Akan majority of Ghana refused to be provoked into picking up arms to battle the barbaric and tribal-nationalist government of the P/NDC, it was primarily because the civilized Akan majority of Ghana and our cross-ethnic allies had determined not to be reduced to the morally regressive level of Mr. Rawlings and his fanatical lackeys.
Regarding the purported commitment of Vice President Atta-Mills to the equitable distribution of the proverbial national cake, need we here, dear reader, highlight the fact that as recently as barely two months ago, the Volta Regional Minister, Mr. Kofi Dzamesi, noted with wistful pride that in the little over 7 years during which the New Patriotic Party has held the reins of governance, the NPP has initiated and completed more development programs and projects for the people of the Volta Region ( the very home-region of ex-President Jeremiah John Rawlings) than the latter’s twenty-year P/NDC regime did for the same region?
In sum, our indisputable contention here is that while, indeed, Mr. Atta-Mills, as Vice-President, had taken a solemn oath to ensure fairness in governance, partly entailing the guaranteeing of the equitable distribution of national capital and material resources, this is not exactly what occurred in reality. In essence, all that the rump-CPP flagbearer, Dr. Nduom, needed to have done ought to have been to simply fine-tune his poignant observation in order to bring home to his audience, the abjectly unenviable development record of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC). For it was not only in the Central Region that the P/NDC government did little worthy of a doctoral dissertation, but also in the afore-referenced region which has been putatively dubbed the “World Bank” of the P/NDC.
Indeed, Dr. Nduom could well have legitimately pointed towards the three northern regions in order to strengthen his quite unarguable contention. And here must also be significantly observed, at least in passing, that in the piddling five-year period that the slain Gen. I. K. Acheampong held Ghana’s reins of governance (1972-77), the National Redemption Council (NRC), later morphed into the Supreme Military Council (SMC I), did more for the people of Ghana than the man who savagely slew Gen. Acheampong, in the dubious name of “Probity and Accountability.”
Indeed, as a keen observer and an avid student of postcolonial Ghanaian history enumerated in an Accra daily a little over a year ago, Gen. Acheampong launched, perhaps, the most successful agricultural development program ever initiated in the country. Does anybody remember OFY or the Operation Feed Yourself program, particularly how well-planned and propagated it was? And, also, the fact that for the very first time in postcolonial Ghanaian history, the country was lucratively exporting farm products, especially yams, to other countries in the West African sub-region?
Then also, there was the quite opportune construction of the Kpong Hydroelectric Power Project, one of the British colonial-era minted energy programs. Then there was the latter’s allied Dawhenya Irrigation Project (DIP), one of the major engines of the Operation Feed Yourself program. Then, of course, there was also the Kaneshie Sports Complex, the most modern of its kind ever at the time of its completion. And who has so easily and readily forgotten the Dansoman Estate Housing Project (DEHP), the largest of its kind in the West African sub-region at the time?
What is ultimately more than merely pathetic, actually downright insulting, about the propaganda document released by the office of Mr. Atta-Mills, is the fact that almost every worthwhile “cosmetic” development project undertaken by the P/NDC in the Central Region is in Cape Coast, which leaves the keen observer and avid student of Ghanaian history wondering whether, indeed, the P/NDC had any viable rural-development agenda during the twenty protracted years that Mr. Rawlings, literally, held Ghanaians by our throats.
For instance, what is the significance of a locally sponsored rural-electrification program that is not meaningfully supported by industrial development? Not surprisingly, these days, the leading operatives of the P/NDC prefer to take shameless credit for the sterling socioeconomic, political and cultural achievements of the New Patriotic Party. And their rationale? Merely for being the immediate-predecessor to the Kufuor Administration of the ruling New Patriotic Party!
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