body-container-line-1

It Is "Solidly" Circumstantial All Right

Feature Article Kennedy Ohene Agyapong
MAY 23, 2015 LISTEN
Kennedy Ohene Agyapong

Here too, about all I can say is that it was only a matter of time before Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong got around to ruing the day and moment he decided to push out then-New Patriotic Party General-Secretary Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie, to make way for the notoriously snooty and decidedly rabid anti-Akufo-Addo former aide to President John Agyekum-Kufuor. The well-heeled and rhetorically flamboyant and some say, hip-shooting, Assin-Central NPP-Member of Parliament also went after then-NPP National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, over the quite embarrassing issue of some Election 2012-earmarked campaign motorbikes that never quite made it to the campaign trail. Legend has it that a personal aide to Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey had unilaterally decided to keep the bikes in the backyard of his house, apparently without the knowledge of the man who had personally handpicked and kept him on the party's payroll to assist Jake in more effectively running the day-to-day affairs of the New Patriotic Party from the latter's national headquarters.

As I vividly recall back then, I wrote several hurried columns advising Mr. Agyapong against such wild-cat move. The devil he knew, I implicitly suggested, was far better than the angel he had yet to know and decide for himself. The decision clearly seemed absurd, if not patently preposterous, for the man that the Assin-Central legislator had decided to back against "Sir John," as Mr. Owusu-Afriyie is popularly known and called, was widely known to be publicly anti-Akufo-Addo, a brazen schemer and reckless party coup-plotter poised to seriously undermining the chances of the former Justice and Foreign Minister at the presidency. What made matters even more absurd was the fact that the Assin-Central MP and media mogul well appeared to remarkably appreciate this bizarre political reality, but so evidently inveterate had his anger and dislike for Messrs. Obetsebi-Lamptey and Owusu-Afriyie grown that Ken Agyapong was all-too-willing to throw caution to the wind by giving his notorious new substitute targets the proverbial benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps fully aware of the fact that he may well have rashly hedged his bet on the wrong horse, belatedly, the former New York City resident issued his new race horse, the Kumasi-Fufuo-Guzzling Mr. Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, a stern warning that the latter may well have laughed off as the ineffectual ranting of a drunken putz. After all, what was one to say to a croccodile that had offered his back to ferry one across the bank of a river, but an ugly knot-headed croc? And now, barely a half-year later, it well appears that Ken Agyapong is having a hard time living up the egregious errors of his rash and angry decision. And such seemingly unbearable regret comes in the wake of the May 20th brutal acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the Upper-East's Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party.

Well, the late Mr. Mahama is widely reported to have had frosty relations with Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong, the striking upshot of which culminated in a riotous disruption of a "secret" meeting that had, reportedly, been scheduled on May 14, or thereabouts, by the two top party administrators with a select few of the party's regional executive members at the Bolgatanga offices of Ghana's main opposition party. Other reports however claim that the secret meeting was being held at a privately-owned rest house by the name of Azonsolum Rest House, or some such nominal identity. During the heat of the ensuing riot that effectively ended the meeting, the two top national headquarters administrators appear to have been assaulted by some party youths partial to the late Mr. Mahama who envisaged the aforesaid meeting to have been a affront to the authority and dignity of their icon and local leader.

For we also learn that both Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong had filed separate assault complaints with the Bolgatanga municipal police. Mr. Mahama, the now-slain NPP Regional Chairman, would shortly release a press statement apologizing for and condemning the outbreak of mayhem in his administrative jurisdiction. He would, however, not take responsibility for the specific events leading to the factional hostilities. Instead, Mr. Mahama would sharply fault Messrs. Afoko and Agyapong for inducing an unhealthy climate of divisiveness that boded ill for the party's chances at Election 2016. More significantly, Mr. Mahama would solemnly and passionately call for the closing of ranks and the unification of party leadership behind the 2016 flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party in order to ensure a resounding victory a little over a year from now. In other words, Mr. Adams Mahama met his most painful death while attempting to restore sanity among the ranks of his party's regional and national executives. He is indisputably a martyr for this very reason. I personally wrote about the man and his very witty press statement scarcely 48 hours prior to his apparent assassination.

Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong's decision to fault former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and his former Chief-of-Staff, Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, for having supposedly masterminded the inescapably primitive and brutal assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama is, to say the least, utterly preposterous. But it is also quite understandable, if also because the two men are widely known to have been mentored by and closely worked with Messrs. Kufuor and Mpiani, and to have also openly campaigned for Mr. Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen in their present respective positions as NPP National Chairman and the party's General-Secretary. Not only have they openly and brazenly campaigned for the man popularly known as "Alan Cash," Messrs. Paul Afoko and Kwabena Agyei Agyepong have also publicly thumbed their noses at supporters and sympathizers of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the 2016 flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party.

In other words, at best, Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong's accusation is more circumstantially based than it is substantial or forensically sustainable in a court of law (See "Mpiani, Kufuor Behind Mahama's Murder - Ken Agyapong" Daily Post 5/22/15). I am, of course, quite certain that Mr. Agyapong said some of the patently intemperate words attributed to him by the Daily Post. But it is also significant to note that the credibility and objectivity of the trashy Trokosi Nationalist rug is another question altogether.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
May 22, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

body-container-line