By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Sept. 5, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I don’t particularly find Mr. George Boateng, the man fighting against President John Dramani Mahama for the National Democratic Congress’ presidential nomination in the lead-up to the 2016 general election to be comical (See “Mahama Challenger Is as Comical as Akua Donkor – Kweku Baako” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/5/15). I don’t find him to be comical because most of the charges that the 45-year-old Oyarifa constituency youth organizer and polling station agent has leveled against the President are incontrovertible. First of all, Mr. Boateng claims that Mr. Mahama has epically failed to sustain the economic development of the country. He has also accused the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House of not doing enough to alleviate the unrelenting grind of poverty against the most economically deprived and underprivileged in Ghanaian society. And then the man has also said that the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress has not done enough to stem the tide of skyrocketing unemployment among college graduates and the country’s youths in general.

What may be deemed comical about some of the remarks by the self-described freight-forwarder regards his rather outrageous vow to cause the summary execution of all LGBT-Q people in the country by firing squad, should he be able to successfully wrest his party’s nomination from Mr. Mahama and go on to win the 2016 presidential election. But here again, too, Mr. Boateng’s pronouncements are no different in thrust and tenor from what the leaders of many of the major Christian and Muslim establishments in the country are saying and have already said about gays and lesbians in Ghanaian society. And so, really, there is absolutely nothing eccentric or erratic about the ideological stance and beliefs of Mr. Boateng. He may not have studied History at the University of Ghana, or Communist Propaganda at Moscow University. But guess what? Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution makes no such stipulation as a prerequisite for vying for the nomination of any major political party in the country.

But the Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Mr. Kweku Baako, is right in observing that Ms. Akua Donkor has made similar remarks as that of the Oyarifa NDC youth organizer and polling agent, but nobody is castigating the leader of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP) for such outrageous and downright controversial remarks. Instead, the motor-mouthed and hip-shooting Akua Donkor has been brought fully into the confidence and power-brokering circles of President Mahama, who has even embarked on several trips abroad with Ms. Donkor, the most recent of which was when Mr. Mahama paid an official visit to Italy and held talks with both Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Indeed, if they are not up in arms against Ms. Akua Donkor, it may be partly because the bad-mouthing GFP leader is not vying for NDC presidential nomination in the lead-up to Election 2016. Then also, as a woman, it is quite possible that Ms. Donkor is capable of offering a widely alleged bed-hopping President Mahama something delicious, and delectable, that Mr. Boateng could never supply. But even more significant is the fact that being afforded free rides on Mr. Mahama’s presidential jet on a fairly regular “tro-tro” basis, together with other perks, including pocket money, have apparently been enough not only to buy off the GFP leader, but also to readily get Ms. Donkor to become a perennial nuisance to formidable Mahama political opponents and challengers like Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia. To be certain, I don’t even find Mr. Boateng’s proposal to legalize marijuana and cause the latter narcotic drug to be cultivated in commercial quantities for export, in a bid to raising adequate development capital, to be funny or humorous.

From what the Mahama challenger has been digging up for our collective refreshment and amusement, vis-à-vis the hitherto beggarly existence of Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia (aka General Mosquito), Mr. Boateng may know quite a lot about the role of narcotic contrabands in the political culture of the ruling party that he is not presently telling us. At least not just yet. Of course, the Nayele Ametefe Scandal gave Ghanaians quite an instructive insight into the role of drug barons in the governance and security arrangement of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress. If he is not wincing at the possibility of making Ghana a major global hub of the illegal trade in marijuana, it is likely because Mr. Boateng may have some insight into such enterprise in a way that most Ghanaians may have an extremely difficult time fathoming.