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20.06.2016 Feature Article

Don’t Start Me, PC!

PC Appiah OforiPC Appiah Ofori
20.06.2016 LISTEN

Just when I was beginning to miss his virtual absence on the national political landscape, there he comes trying to charitably defend the patently indefensible. The fact of the matter is that the man who heartily celebrated the mysterious passing of President John Evans Atta-Mills as one of a godsend, which also constituted an auspicious changing of the guard, is notorious for being pathologically corrupt.

No wonder he has been singularly credited with having invented the primitive politics of shit-bombing, whereby any media institution bold enough to take on the erstwhile Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had its premises flooded with human waste.

Now, let’s get to brass-tacks – and the real fact of the matter is that Little Dramani is as putridly corrupt as they come; and in Ghanaian political circles, they come a dozen a pesewa. But, of course, among the vanguard ranks of the megalomaniacal operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress, they come two dozen a pesewa.

Many of our readers may have so soon forgotten this, but it was the now-President John Dramani Mahama who, as Vice-President, led a parliamentary delegation to Seoul, the South Korean capital, in the matter of the contractual scam that became globally known as the STX Scandal. The fact of the matter is that Little Dramani never espied any opportunity for scamming the Ghanaian taxpayer that he was willing to pass up or let slide by.

Just the other day, for instance, one fed-up Ghanaian lawmaker described the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House as an impudent man “who eats, breathes and drinks corruption.” And to the latter, one may aptly add, “And evacuates corruption.” Indeed, going by the available evidence, the entire corporeal fabric of the Bole-Bamboi native’s personality reeks of thoroughgoing corruption. In the STX Scandal, for example, the Mahama-led delegation was widely reported to have literally scrambled for state-of-the-art laptop computers from the proprietors of the Seoul-based construction firm that was lamely handed the billion-dollar (abortive) contract to build, of all projects, public housing for Ghanaian citizens.

As I pointed out back then, the STX Scandal represented the most lame-brained contractual agreement ever to be entered into by any sitting postcolonial Ghanaian government. It was, to be very charitable, indescribably dumb, particularly the part regarding making Ghanaian masons, architects and real-estate developers and dealers the subcontractors of the Koreans.

No wonder the extant South Korean Vice-President took the red-eye to Accra in the wake of the initialing of this veritably slavish contract, perhaps the most soft-headed compact to be entered into by any postcolonial African government since the massive deportation and enslavement of African humanity from the mid-fifteenth century until the close of the nineteenth century.

Ironically, Little Dramani has been described as a historian of remarkable genius. Somebody tell me what sort of history books and/or documents the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House has been reading lately. Where my beef with PC Appiah-Ofori comes in regards the former maverick New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa’s vacuous admonishment that Ghanaians must not hasten to pass judgment on the $ 100,000 Ford Expedition SUV reportedly gifted then-Vice-President Mahama by a Burkinabe contractor by the name of Monsieur Gibril Kanazoe (some media sources have the gift-giver’s first name spelled as “Djibril”), because the capacity in which the aforesaid gift was presented to Little Dramani has yet to be objectively established.

Nice try, PC, but you come into this sorry-assed game of self-interested defense of Little Dramani too late. Already, Dr. Edward Omane-Boamah, the notorious scofflaw and President Mahama’s morally rotten Town-crier, known officially as Communications Minister, has let it on to the nation that, indeed, the alleged gift was proffered by Mr. Kanazoe and duly and promptly accepted by his boss. What is even more significant to observe is the fact that according to Dr. Omane-Boamah, the Ford Expedition SUV was added to the existing fleet of vehicles marked with the imprimatur, of official seal, of the Flagstaff House or the Presidency.

And so the logical question becomes: Did the Mills-Mahama government officially and categorically appeal to Monsieur Kanazoe, who is also known to be an auto dealer in Ouagadougou, to either donate or present the 2010 brand-new Ford Expedition SUV to the Presidency? Was Mr. Mahama known to have been friends with Monsieur Kanazoe prior to the offering of the “Gift Horse”? well, I call it a “Gift House,” in classical Trojan parlance, because we have yet to learn to what extent this purported gift may have significantly compromised the financial and/or economic integrity of the nation, being that Mr. Kanazoe is alleged to have been ceded government contracts totaling approximately some GH₵ 82-85 million.

Now, isn’t a payola investment of some $100,000 an epic bargain of bonanza proportions?!

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

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