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21.10.2011 Feature Article

Humiliation for manufacturing untruth

Humiliation for manufacturing untruth
21.10.2011 LISTEN

Ekow Nelson, 20th October 2011
I really had given up until I stumbled upon this piece of grudging and farcical admission by Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. (“Humiliation for What?” ModernGhana.com, 17 October 2011) and wondered why he would not concede that the entire basis of his arguments in his two rejoinders to my contributions on this subject, was just simply wrong.

In his initial response to my article (“Masking humiliation with weasel words - Dr. Danquah Goebels” Ghanaweb.com, 16th October 2011), Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. tried to play down the serious inaccuracies on which his entire critique of President Nkrumah was based, and suggested rather dishonestly, and quite preposterously, that they were down to “occasional errors in documentary details for somebody who writes as much and as often” as he does.

Let us remind ourselves of what Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr offered in direct contradiction to my claim that “Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei, Nkrumah's contemporary at Lincoln University was … awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater in 1962”. In “Another Propagandistic Twaddle” (MyJoyOnline 11 October 2011 and Ghanaweb 12 October 2011) he wrote this: “I must also hasten to add that contrary to what Mr. Nelson would have his readers believe, it was highly unlikely for Mr. Ebenezer Ako-Adjei to have been conferred with an honorary doctorate in 1962, when the man who introduced the future President Nkrumah to Dr. Danquah and the mainstream of modern Ghanaian politics was in prison facing the death penalty, having been charged for a dubious role in the Kulungugu assassination attempt on the life of the African Show Boy. Mr. Ako-Adjei was then President Nkrumah's own Foreign Affairs Minister! Talk of pathological paranoia!”

In fact, commenting on my piece - “Ghana and Africa: Nkrumah the Undisputed 'Motivating Force' on myjoyonline.com (7 October 2011) -, Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. offered this bold side-swipe (emphasis added): “ISN'T IT RATHER STUPID” he wrote, “for anybody to claim that Mr. Ako-Adjei had been conferred with an honorary doctorate by Lincoln University in 1962…?”

How could Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. now, having been resoundingly proven wrong, rather blithely dismiss this as “occasional errors in documentary details for somebody who writes as much and as often as I do”? Particularly, since in that same article, he sought to underscore his point above by 'regaling' us with this as the truth: “in 1952, Messrs. Kwame Nkrumah, Kojo Botsio and Ebenezer Ako-Adjei were all conferred with the honorary doctorate by Pennsylvania's Lincoln University” as an alternative to my original contention? And, with breathtaking chutzpah, he went on to make a bold claim that his was “A MATTER OF PUBLIC RECORD – personally attested by Mr. Cameron Duodu” (my emphasis).

Having erected this perfect backdrop, Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. then reloaded his bazooka and launched a full frontal on Nkrumah, describing him as a clinical megalomaniac who expressly forbade Ako-Adjei and Kojo Botsio from officially responding “to their [non-existent] honorary doctoral degrees, as doing so would untowardly diminish the “Nkrumah Phenomenon” in the eyes of a largely unsuspecting Ghanaian populace. In other words, by capricious decree, Nkrumah ravenously craved to be envisaged as sui generis among his peers”. The basis for all this, turned out to be pure fiction.

Now Kwame-Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr. will have us believe that his entire construction, shown to be based on fabrications and falsehoods, is only an occasional error “in documentary details for somebody who writes as much and as often” as he does. Phew!

Who does this guy take us for? Why does he think he can insult our intelligence when the simple and decent thing to do is to concede he was wrong and move on? A genuine, occasional error for someone who writes as often and as much as he does is the date on his last rejoinder - 16th October 2000[sic] -, not the carefully constructed mendacious pieces he attempted to peddle here and elsewhere, until he was caught out.

As for his new refrain of “critically and creatively challenged”, I feel rather smug that he has adopted and adapted an expression I started using - referring to him as “analytically challenged”. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But seriously, how can an obsessive individual whose every other article is so predictable and about one subject, call anyone “creatively challenged”? He has only one narrative: Dr. Danuqah is the “undisputed Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics” - yawn, yawn, yawn. And “critically challenged”? From a guy who would have us believe that Ako-Adjei (then a staunch member the opposition United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) led by his own Dr. Danquah) complied with Nkrumah's wishes not to use an honorific title he was - it turns out - not awarded in 1951? This guy could not even work out that given that Ako-Adjei did not join the Nkrumah's CPP until 1953, Nkrumah could not possibly have expressly forbidden him from using his [non-existent] honorific title, barely a month after the 1951 elections.

Only a critically challenged individual would respond to the following statement: “Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei, Nkrumah's contemporary at Lincoln University was also awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater in 1962”

with;
“it was highly unlikely for Mr. Ebenezer Ako-Adjei to have been conferred with an honorary doctorate in 1962, when …[he] was in prison facing the death penalty, having been charged for a dubious role in the Kulungugu assassination attempt”.

For a knowledgeable person would have known that the Kulungugu assassination attempt was in August 1962, and a critical mind would have worked out his receipt of such an award was plausible, given that there were some seven (nearly eight) months during 1962 when Ako Adjei was not in prison, rendering his noisy, but alas, false rebuttal of my earlier accurate point, rather contemptible really.

Despite his protestations, this was a lame but shameless and vacuous defence of the humiliation of a know-it-all who turned not to know much after all, and worse, manufactured his own facts. But he still doesn't get it! What a poseur!

Ekow Nelson
London
October 2011

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