The metamorphosis and wrath of Dr. Ahoofe

By now, many who visit Ghanaweb should be well aware of the formidable Dr. Okoampa Ahoofe and the ethos of unrelenting and unrepentant vitriol that characterize his writings. While many have been quick to malign his thoughts and political ideas and label him ‘tribalistic’, ‘prejudiced’, ultra partisan, fanatical and such, I have carefully stood back and, in the course of time, have been gratefully rewarded with a much more endearing emanation of a gem. Surely, Ahoofe is not just an event, but an unfolding process; a process of catastrophe and mayhem. I write this at great risk to myself, for the wrath of Ahoofe is rather severe against anyone who dares cross his path or the paths of his crusades; but being the ‘wofase’ of Dr. Danquah myself, and hailing from Kyebi-Adadientem, I am quite secure in my bonafides to tread a little lightly accross the paths of the formidable one.

One thing is clear; Okoampa’s likes and dislikes are worn right on his brow for all to see. He adores JB Danquah; he hates Nkrumah. He loves the NPP and he hates the CPP and NDC. He detests Jerry Rawlings! And like the proverbial farmer who sews his seed on good soil, he is peddling these fashions in an era when Busiah- Danquaism has so successfully entrenched itself within the populace, that, the powers that be have become confident enough to surreptitiously wedge in Domboism to complete this dubious trinity. On the surface Ahoofe’s various passions are not extraordinary; easily, half the populations of Ghana could fit into this categorization and other permutations of them. What is remarkable is Ahoofe’s sworn duty as zealot and whip for the cause. Did you know that Ahoofe was once a die-hard Nkrumaist and did write this same brand of articles in support of Nkrumah’s policies; and further he was as anti-UP as he is pro-UP now in support of JB Danquah and UP against Nkrumah? Does all this confuse you? And I’m not referring to a far away point in time. He has done all this in the space of time that Ghana web has existed. Today he has conveniently got the webmaster to remove his earlier pro-Nkrumaist articles to save himself the embarrassment of this manic conundrum.

Let me say, I myself have been a little guilty, albeit in a little less polar way, of making a switch in allegiance. The very few who happen to know me would attest to my avid support for Nkrumah some 20 and odd years ago. But since gaining in wisdom, I have learnt to come to terms with the deeply flawed Nkrumaist industrial plan. In my case, however, I have not become any more sympathetic to the other, similarly deeply flawed, philosophy of what is labeled as Busia-Danquah - and now- Domboism. While I am awed by, especially, Busia’s understanding of colonization and chieftaincy and the deliberate injustices inherent within these systems, and again, while I am flattered - being his nephew - by Danquah’s political gunslinging and audaciousness at the colonial government and its administrators, the fact that Busia and Danquah were willing to align with chiefs, the very conduits of colonial injustice and opportunism, when Nkrumah gained political ascendancy, relegated them to opportunists and sometimes jealous malcontents.

Okoampa in his self- touted book “Dr. JB Danquah – Architect of modern Ghana”, sets himself an impossible task, to re-write Danquah into the history of modern Ghana by blotting out Nkrumah and the phenomenon of Nkrumaism. And we all know how shaky such an undertaking can be. In the end, I must confess, one learns a few stranded bits, additional snippets of Danquah’s limited role in the independence process. The whole book leaves one looking for substance, and in the wake of finding none, in sympathy, we cling to any straw that might embellish the wispy dispersion of Mr. Danquah’s image throughout the narrative, and reluctantly fall in stride when the author stuffs him with enough inconsequential ballast to merit his claims about Danquah’s status and achievements.

Afflicted by this pathology, the author, in recent times, more than ever obsessed , now has his hero as the founder of modern Ghanaian education, the builder of Legon university, the real liberator of Ghana, the founder of the Cocoa Marketing Board, the author of the Constitution of Ghana, the actual builder of the Akosombo dam and even the initiator of the current school-feeding program. Such is the enthusiasm of the professor. The old bones of the dead doyen, arrogant and intellectually self-aware as he has been proverbially known, must cringe at such effusions of salutary misrepresentation. I have not ventured past the aforementioned book to the 16 others that Dr Ahoofe claims to have penned, and I pray God grant me the wisdom, time, moral fortitude and turpitude to attempt what I now see as a prodigious labor of love. For now his numerous articles are all I have to go by, and me believes that Ahoofe is pursuing a pogrom that will eventually devour all but himself and his faithful brood, Nana Kwame III and Osofo Sintim, and leave them as the sole guardians of the great Busia-Danquah-Akufo-Addo – and not to forget – Dumbo tradition. It is not too difficult to figure out why. You see, having demonized the regime of Jerry Rawlings and in the process acquiring a deep hatred for the person of Junior Jesus himself, and then having elevated Danquah, Akuffo Addo and the UP/NPP tradition on the other hand, Ahoofe oftentimes finds himself in somewhat precarious circumstances. One such circumstance came up recently when Kwame Pianim, an NPP guru, not long after praising the cash-strapped NPP government’s attempt to sell off valuable national possessions like the Ghana Telecom , came out to call the ‘odious’ Junior Jesus, a Messiah, for increasing cocoa producer prices to cocoa farmers during one of his frequent seizures of the Ghanaian throne. This must have set Ahoofe into a ballistic mode. A ballistic Ahoofe is as dangerous as a green mamba, and as treacherous as a spider. In the end, his treachery won the better of him, for his love of Danquah took possession of his senses. It was then we were blessed with that new erudition that, it was Danquah who started the CMB and, further, it was actually Danquah and not Tetteh Quarshie who swallowed the fateful beans that fateful day in Fernando Po. Remember the wrath of Ahoofe when another Ghanaian scholar teaching in the US, a recipient of a prestigious writing award, dared to expose some sordid truths about the doyen and Busia as being part of a bomb-throwing team, who, in addition to bomb-throwing , deliberately tried to delay the independence of our country? Well, Ahoofe wrote a whole book to castigate this pretender, this ‘dancer’ who had dared to venture into history. Like Newton, Ahoofe proffered his theory of political motion saying a dancer could never be a historian, nor a historian a dancer, all else being constant. And lest anybody try to check him, he checkmated us all by the revelation that JB Danquah was the putative inventor of dance and, in any case, JB was the first historian in Ghana anyway.

And when that UN Sanitations organization declares publicly that under the NPP’s watch, Ghana has become one of the dirtiest countries in the world. Ahoofe will scream in defiance that ,.. “The dirt in Ghana today was initiated by the rump Jato Dzeleukope and only in the Golden Age of Business has the NPP, under the putative leadership of JA Kuffuor and his condign Presidential Initiatives, has this hidden dirt been cleaned from under the tables for the whole world to see”. Very logical, for after all - you guessed right – JB Danquah invented hygiene! Today, the prospect of an Akuffo-Addo presidency has freed Ahoofe from the dangerous ideologically manic clouds that have hung like the ‘sword of Damocles’ over his head. Ahoofe, to start with, was never a big fan of Mr. Kuffour for the simple reason that Kuffour had served in the PNDC government of Jato Dzeleukope , whom as we are aware, Ahoofe detests. To make matters worse, Kuffuor did not resign from the PNDC when the judges were murdered. But to visit his wrath on Kuffuor would be damaging to the NPP and this must have put him in a very uncomfortable position. Even though this agony, in true Ahoofesque fashion, must be vitiated by the fact of the great Dr Danquah defending the murderers of Akyea-Mensah, it has remained a thorn in Ahoofe’s flesh. After all Kuffuor is not from Adadientem and he is certainly not the ‘putative doyen’ of Ghanaian politics.

Akuffo-Addo comes with no such baggage. Infact according to Ahoofe, Akuffo-Addo was on the target list of the PNDC goons, which makes him perfect for the adulation of Ahoofe. And he is from Kyebi. And …and…. even though we Danquah boys think we are the real intellects in the mix, we do love our Ofori-Atta cousins. Those who follow the missives of Ahoofe should not be surprised at the accolades and superlatives that he heaps on the chosen man of little promise and many promises – Akuffo-Addo. Akuffo-Addo has become, to Ahoofe, the perfect plinth upon which to resurrect JB Danquah. It is time now for me to stop and reflect on the enormous rage that I may have possibly generated in Ahoofe, and also contemplate the enormous punishment that will surely be meted out to me. But as I wrote earlier, I’m also from Adadientem and in the interstices of its jungle-Kwaeibibirem-, are to be found the hardest of the akupas, who don’t fear nothing. If the Asante is shiii shiii, then we Adadientem boys are huuuu-huuu and paaa-paaa. JB, our leader, invented the forest (Ahoofe’s assertion); Ahoofe is a product of this invention, and so am I. Akyea, nso embuye! (It is crooked but not broken)

Kwesi Yeboah, Halifax, canada.