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

The anti-Osafo-Maafo demonstration that was sponsored by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had absolutely nothing to do with the fight for justice or anti-bigotry (See "Commend NPP for Joining Anti-Osafo-Maafo Demo - Ablakwa" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/4/15). If it did, the key operatives of the NDC would have been the least qualified to either organize or sponsor such a protest. For almost every single one of that party's leaders, among them Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills and Mr. John Dramani Mahama, cut his teeth on the decidedly benighted politics of bigotry.

And so it is rather farcical to see party apparatchiks like Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, Deputy Education Minister, cynically attempt to capture the high moral ground on the question of ethnic bigotry in Fourth-Republican Ghanaian politics. After all, who has so soon forgotten President Mahama publicly sneering at Ghanaians of Asante descent and disdainfully swearing that so congenitally and pathologically ungrateful were Asantes that even if his government paved all the roads and highways of the Asante Region with gold, Asantes would still not appreciate such a remarkable achievement? Then also, who has so soon forgotten President Mahama's abjectly disrespectful and culturally intemperate description of Kyebi, the Okyeman royal capital, as the Headquarters of Galamsey?

It goes without saying that the so-called One Ghana protest demonstration was not about one Ghana at all; rather, it was a cheap and tawdry ploy by a grossly incompetent Mahama-led National Democratic Congress government trying to divert attention from the myriad socioeconomic mess which it has created and continue to worsen by the day, in desperate hopes of affording itself a fighting chance at Election 2016. This is why they have resorted to planting moles among the leadership of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). Fortunately, Ghanaians are increasingly becoming savvy enough to see through such cheap political gimmickry.

Election 2016 is going to be squarely predicated on the performance records of both the NDC and NPP governments, and not vainly on what some snitches or political rats disingenuously presume to represent the collective ideological stance of the leadership of Ghana's most liberal and progressive political party. It is as clear as day and night that Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo was merely contributing his personal opinions to a party discussion, however disagreeable some Ghanaians, irrespective of ideological suasion, may envisage the same. What is more, whether his opinons were laden with bigotry or not, Mr. Osafo-Maafo is entitled to his constitutionally sanctioned freedom of speech. It is not as if the NPP's 2016 platform and agenda for cleaning up the mess created by Messrs. Mahama and Amissah-Arthur would be based on the remarks allegedly made by the former Kufuor Sports and Finance Minister.

What surprised me, though, was the rather curious decision by the NPP-MP for Ablekuma-West, Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, to join ranks with the very NDC thuggish operatives who literally mauled the Akyem-Oda native some four, or so, years ago, because Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful had dared to campaign in a constituency in Accra that Mr. Ade Coker, the Greater-Accra NDC Chairman, had illegally declared as a "No-Go Area" for Ghanaian citizens sporting Akan last names. And so I was not the least bit surprised to learn that during the course of their participation in the so-called One Ghana protest demonstration, the Deputy NPP Parliamentary Minority Leader, Mr. Dominic Nitiwul, himself an ethnic minority, was virulently chased out of the crowd of demonstrators.

Other NPP stalwarts who allegedly met a similar fate were Nana Akomea, the NPP's Communications Director, and Mr. Samuel Awuku, the party's National Youth Organizer. Why the NPP leaders appear to be such annoyingly slow learners, when it comes to accurately sizing up the intentions and objectives of their external detractors and main political opponents, is what continues to boggle my mind.

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