By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
May 24, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The fractious leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) may have asked for it, but I don't see how reprobate characters like Mr. Kofi Adams, the National Organizer of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), could muster the moral authority and political credibility to grandstand over the acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the Regional Chairman of the Upper-East branch of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (See "Adams' Murder Shows A Graduation Of Irresponsibility In NPP - Kofi Adams" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/23/15).

The fact of the matter is that political assassinations have become so second-nature to the key operatives of the NDC that it no longer attracts the sort of moral crisis and psychological trauma it attracts among the rank-and-file membership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Just last November, for example, the Nkwanta-South District Chief Executive Officer (DCE), Mr. Peter Kojo Kenyenso, was savagely gunned down by an unidentified assassin (See "Nkwanta-South DCE Murdered By Unknown Gunman" Ghana News Agency 11/4/14).

At the time of this heinous incident, the NDC-Member of Parliament for Nkwanta-South Constituency, Mr. Gershon Gbediame, said that he expected the situation to escalate, even though no party insiders had been fingered or had claimed responsibility for the attack. I hope the reader fully appreciates the import of Mr. Gbediame's statement. And if the NDC leadership cannot find the assailant or assailants of Mr. Peter Kojo Kenyenso, one wonders why President John Dramani Mahama could presume to supervise the chastisement or prosecution of the murderers of NPP's Mr. Adams Mahama? Or has President Mahama been so moved because namesake? We shall fully touch on the latter matter in another column shortly.

It is also worth noting, if for nothing at all, that the faction within the NPP whose operatives are widely alleged to have assassinated Mr. Adams Mahama have also been widely known to be working in close association with the NDC to eviscerate any chances of Nana Akufo-Addo's clinching the presidency come Election 2016. These NPP factional enemies have already been successful in their machinations on two consecutive occasions. Well, for instance, the leader of that faction is widely known to have spent most of the 2012 electioneering campaign season soliciting the support of President Mahama for a European-based United Nations-sponsored plum job. Interestingly, as had been widely expected then, this sworn partisan nihilist miserably failed in his efforts.

And as I have consistently and insistently adumbrated, we really don't know what went on behind the scenes between the afore-referenced egocentric and egomaniacal key NPP operative and his co-scheming counterparts of the National Democratic Congress. It is also rather absurd for a man who climbed up the hierarchy of Ghana's most violent political party, as the paid aide of the rambunctious, self-righteous and bloody Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, to be accusing the genuine and real leaders of the New Patriotic Party of having "graduated" into a status of "irresponsibility."

If, indeed, Mr. Adams has any iota of truth to his accusation, at least the reality here is indisputably that it was, indeed, the NDC Professors of Violence and Irresponsibility who tutored their cunning and treacherous allies within the New Patriotic Party to become so adept in the use of violence as to attempt to suavely strong-arm their internal enemies and political opponents into going to bat for the Mahama posse. Mr. Adams may also do himself and his conscience - if he has any - a lot of good by studying the "revolutionary" history of the Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), before cavalierly presuming to feel superior to the leadership of the most progressive political party of Fourth-Republican Ghana.

Now, let us talk about "responsibility" and "irresponsibility." The fact of the matter, even as the founding-father of the National Democratic Congress has publicly attested time and time again, is that the NDC is the most corrupt, theft-prone and incompetent governing political party in the nearly 60 years of Ghana's postcolonial existence. Has anybody figured out precisely why Arch-Thief Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings fiercely fought the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills for the party's presidential nomination and the presidency of Ghana in 2010?

Then also, for instance, on August 4, 2013, a news article was published on the World-Wide Web captioned "NDC Executives In Nkwanta-North Protest Against The Arrest Of 25 Supporters." The article went on to say that some NDC party youths had set ablaze at least 5 government-owned vehicles of assorted models. Now, what we are talking about here is the reckless misuse of the Ghanaian taxpayer's money. Why, if we may ask the NDC's Mr. Adams, did the Nkwanta-North NDC Executives prevent the judicial prosecution of these party-hired thugs and vandals?

And now, with regard to the carcinogenic question of politically motivated murders or assassinations, it would be very instructive to hear what the Head of the Ekumfi-Otuam Clan of the late President Atta-Mills has to say about the circumstances surrounding the death of the former Rawlings arch-lieutenant. Indeed, Mr. Rawlings has, himself, made several tell-tale public statements about the "auspicious demise" of the former Legon tax-law professor that make the brutal acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama seem like the most forensically transparent death of its kind in recent national memory.

Indeed, what the likes of Mr. Adams, the NDC's National Organizer, ought to be asking is why, to-date, his governing party has been unable to publish a detailed autopsy report on Ghana's first president to die in office. Those who live in straw-huts, it has been said, have no business lighting match-sticks in the courtyards of their neighbors' homes.

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