By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 2, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I first got to know about Mr. Hopeson Adorye during the 2012 New Patriotic Party Presidential Petition when, together with Sir John or Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie, he was brought up on charges of judicial contempt. He would be slapped with a quite hefty fine which would be promptly settled by Mr. Paul Collins (PC) Appiah-Ofori, the retired NPP-MP for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa, in the Central Region.

Well, I have yet to publicly hear from the politically significant, substantive and astute likes of PC on the health of the widely presumed NPP flagbearer for Election 2016; and so I would have to reserve my opinions and comments on who best qualifies to speak to the purported concerns about the state of the health of the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Nonetheless, there is something suspiciously funny when a man who claims to be intimately familiar with the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice exhibits the sort of propagandistic mendacity that is routinely associated with the most inveterate internal political enemies of Nana Akufo-Addo. And so, perhaps, I am wholly justified in presuming that Mr. Adorye's rather uncharacteristically effusive tirade against his former benefactor and/or mentor (the dear reader can choose his/her pick) is the younger man's formal declaration of war against the former NPP-MP for Akyem-Abuakwa South (See "Nana Addo Suspends Campaign On Health Grounds" Ghanaweb.com 8/3/14).

I recently observed in one of my legion columns on NPP politics that in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential primary, affairs inside the party are bound to get stridently nasty and then staid and placid immediately prior to the Election 2016 poll itself. Well, this is one of the finest examples of the sort of political rough-and-tumble maneuvering that I have been talking about. We have been this way before. And this raging storm in a fermented palmwine pot, too, shall come to pass.

First of all, Nana Akufo-Addo just chalked his 70th birthday this year. And yet, Mr. Adorye is scandalously claiming that the man is already 73 years old. This is a flagrant act of mischief that is highly unlikely to be either forgotten or even forgiven anytime soon. It is also rather silly for Mr. Adorye to so rudely assert that since Nana Akufo-Addo is not the Chairman of the NPP nor the Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), it logically follows that he has absolutely no right to presume to suspend his presidential primary campaign to monitor the ongoing limited voters' registration exercise. No argument could be so infantilely absurd.

The fact of the matter is that Nana Akufo-Addo has a far greater and more credible stake in the legitimate conduct of the limited voters' registration than each and every one of his six competitors vying for the flagbearership of the New Patriotic Party. And as a bona fide and distinguished citizen of Ghana, nothing prevents the man from becoming his own best friend, by guaranteeing for himself, the third time around, what party hacks and (evidently) hirelings like Mr. Adorye woefully failed to guarantee through two critical election cycles.

Call it oldage or whatever you may, but the glaring fact of the matter is that the late President John Evans Atta-Mills was no twin-brother of Nana Akufo-Addo's, as Mr. Adorye and his apparently new paymasters presume to hoodwink Ghanaian voters into believing. And I am quite certain that even Dr. Cadman Mills, the biological twin-brother of President Mills would implacably resent any such dastardly attempt to imply that, somehow, the biological clock of his late brother is, perforce, one and the same as his own.

I also don't know what he means, when the newly self-proclaimed Akufo-Addo nemesis rather callously and savagely asserts as follows: "Personally, I think that Nana must throw in the towel to save his life. We can't have a second Atta Mills' [sic]tragedy. Our financial resources are limited, and we can't afford to waste money on expensive state funerals"?

Rather fascinating, indeed! At any rate, exactly whose money are we talking about here, since it was quite obvious that had Mr. Appiah-Ofori not promptly intervened, it is quite certain that Mr. Adorye would have spent at least several nights and days behind bars a la Justice Atuguba? Then, also, is Mr. Adorye implying that, somehow, Nana Akufo-Addo has not adequately distinguished himself to deserve the posthumous awarding of a state funeral and burial, should Divine Providence decide to recall his soul into eternity today?

There is an age-old Akan maxim which runs as follows: "When it is coming, it does." In other words, does Mr. Adorye's tirade have anything to do with him having recently received some 59 pieces of Silver-Cash? Or the man has simply been moon-gazing for far too long?

_____________________________________________________