Rawlings was In Power For Twenty Years!

Former President Jerry John Rawlings

I have said this before and hereby reiterate the same, that during the twenty protracted years that he imperiously lorded it over Ghanaians, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings’ greatest achievement was to whip up Anlo-Ewe tribal sentiments against the country’s ethnic Akan majority populace.

One would have thought that all the socioeconomic problems confronting people in the Volta Region, particularly Anlo-Ewes in the southern part of the region, had been caused by Akans, especially Asantes. The legendary success of women traders in the Asante regional capital would preoccupy the envy-driven Rawlings-led junta of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

I was a Kumasi-resident student then attending St. Peter’s Secondary School (aka PERSCO) at Okwawu-Nkwatia, a legendary old Akyem settlement, I learned quite recently. That PERSCO at the time was easily the best high school in Ghana, may well have had a quite remarkable lot to do with this critical ancient Akyem presence. Of course, I had no way of knowing this at the time; this very wholesome knowledge would come to yours truly much, much later.

And then not very long ago, yours truly also learned that the principal Okwawu commercial city of Nkawkaw, and perhaps its most significant city as well, was actually half-Akyem. He had always been of the erroneous impression that the northeastern boundary of Okyeman, properly speaking Akyem-Abuakwa, ended somewhere around Enyiresi (Little England) and Jejeti (Gyegyeti).

That it was a bona fide Okwawu denizen, from Okwawu-‘Bomeng, who apprized me of this morally exhilarating fact, made this newly-acquired sliver of knowledge all the more therapeutic, authentic and ineffably refreshing. Of course, the Mawuli boys had also established a quite remarkable presence at PERSCO, but it was undoubtedly the Akyem boys who were often credited with genius aptitude in the mathematical sciences.

For the most part, and my part as well, I should say with pride-laced modesty, that there was absolutely no Akyem disappointment in the liberal arts, especially in such subjects English, Literature, History and Geography. And then, alas, June 4, 1979 struck and Chairman Rawlings went on the air and, and in his faux-Scottish accent, told us what we had known for quite some time then, that there was too much corruption among the ranks of the country’s outgoing military leadership which he and his AFRC Abongo Boys intended to clean up in no time.

Even in those days of our early and late teens, most of us PERSCOVITES or PERSCOBAS, did not need to be apprized of the rank socioeconomic and cultural rot. Indeed, shortly prior to his 1978 removal from power in a palace coup, led by his comically mustachioed pop-eyed arch-lieutenant, Gen. F. W. K. Akuffo, Gen. I. K. Acheampong had hosted a National Week of Prayer and Repentance. The Atwima-Trabuom native clearly knew what was wrong with the nation; he simply did not know how to put the brakes on it. “Mr.” Akwasi Acheampong would horribly pay for his part of this rank postcolonial rot. He would pay the ultimate price.

He would pay with his life. Acheampong would be callously torn from his placid and increasingly obscure existence and be savagely executed by firing squad like a common criminal. I would continue to experience nightmares over this barbaric episode until after the day that I paid a visit to Opanyin Kutu at Atwima-Trabuom and later to Mrs. Faustina Acheampong at Kumasi’s South-Suntreso Estates, in the company of my cousin Chenard Kwame Sintim-Aboagye.

For twenty years, Chairman Rawlings smugly presided over the globally infamous sea erosion of his own maternal hometown of Keta-Sogakope, the best and most famous poem about which had been written and published by an Akan man of Fante descent by the name of Mr. (Henry Osborne) Kwesi Brew, and not by the rambunctious Ewe-born agitprop point man of the Trokosi Revolution, Professor Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor, as some grizzled Ghanaian journalist with rabid animus for my late father recently had the temerity to write on Wikipedia. I had committed the capital crime of having scandalously claimed the critic, a quite renowned columnist and sometime editor of one of Ghana’s state-owned dailies, as a second-cousin to the oldman.

At any rate, what is significant to note here is the need for the Akufo-Addo Presidential Campaign Team to systematically and meticulously document all the development projects undertaken in the Volta Region during the 8 “golden years” that the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) held the fort, as it were, and then neatly draw the balance sheet against 20 years of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings.

And since it was President John Dramani Mahama (aka “The Northern Hope”) who most recently raised Cain about Volta underdevelopment, neatly mark out 8 years of Mills-Mahama stewardship and ask the Anlo-Ewes of Trokosiland – actually I had wanted to writer “Togbui Sri II’s land,” which would have unnecessarily detracted from the rhythm of this write-up – whether it had really been worth their votes.

And on the latter note, it may be worth reminding the “Ganja Boy” of his imperative need to fully appreciate the fact that Anlo-Ewes can eloquently speak for themselves, plead their own sacred nationalist cause (See “Keta Sea Defense: Rawlings’ Propaganda, Kufuor’s ‘Amnesia’ – Baako” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/10/16).

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