By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Oct. 16, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I don’t think what Mr. Ace Kojo Ankomah, routinely described as “one of the leaders” of the political activist group OccupyGhana, really said or meant was that the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) was too poor to put him on a salary regimen if he decided to contractually shill or do propaganda work for it. Obviously, I don’t know what he is worth, but one can be quite certain that if he was once on the faculty of the Ghana Law School as a senior lecturer, a non-tenured position, then, of course, his asking price may not be that prohibitive. Besides, one’s salary scale or requirement is not the most important issue at stake here. Rather, what is at stake here is a matter of principles; and what I clearly understand Mr. Ankomah to be saying here is that his sense of decency and principles does not allow him to bat for any one of the two major political parties.

This is not the first time that any leading member of OccupyGhana has been accused by some prominent operative of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) of fronting for the New Patriotic Party. In the recent past, Mr. Sydney Casely-Hayford, the renowned and respectable financial analyst, has been accused by the same suspects, as it were, of shilling for the NPP. Like Mr. Ankomah, Mr. Casely-Hayford has parried off such patently morbid accusation as one that insults his intelligence and sense of moral decency. But he has not gone as tonally adversarial as the much younger Mr. Ankomah. Indeed, if the leaders of OccupyGhana appear to be politically approving of the ideological suasion and the publicly stated policies of the leadership of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party, it is obviously because both the OccupyGhana leaders and the leaders of the NPP believe in many of the same things, namely, democratic liberalism and a free-market economy.

Short of the foregoing, the OccupyGhana leaders are primarily rights activists and advocates. And such rights as they have been vigorously advocating and championing include the right of the ordinary Ghanaian to a decent salary and/or wages, access to good healthcare services and good quality-of-life standard. If staunchly advocating for the best quality of life that modern civilized society has to offer the average Ghanaian citizen makes these OccupyGhana leaders bona fide front men and women of the New Patriotic Party, then, clearly, it goes without saying that the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress has absolutely no business presuming to be governing the country in the interest of Ghanaian citizens.

It ought to also become obvious to the Mahama posse by now that most well-educated people, both in Ghana and around the globe, have absolutely no use for the sort of faux-primitive socialist gospel promoted by the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress. It hasn’t worked in China or Russia, the largest and most important economies to have experimented temporally considerably with Marxist economic policies. Mr. Ankomah is also right to painfully recognize the fact that, by and large, as individuals, Ghanaian politicians are almost invariably self-centered and incurably corrupt, their vehement protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. I also think that the leaders of such an embarrassingly copycat name as OccupyGhana could have been more creative and come up with a more organic or indigenous nominal label.

Where I tend to disagree with Mr. Ankomah regards the place and significance of personal experience in the context of the greater good of the country or the nation. You see, I was summarily expelled from the New Patriotic Party by the Kufuor Faction, those whom I choose to designate as The Edweso/ Ejisu Boys. But that has not prevented me from coming out in vigorous support of the ideological principles of the NPP, even if I am not heavily invested in the integrity of a remarkable percentage of the party’s leadership.