NPP Vigilante Forces Are Purely Self-Defensive

We need to fully appreciate the fact that the culture of political and militia vigilantism has been the mainstay of the present main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for some 30 years. And that it was, indeed, the fierce and progressive determination of the leadership of the now-ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), then a loosely organized coalition of democracy-seeking opposition forces, to break up this vicious stranglehold of the faux-socialist and shamelessly populist dictatorship of the Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress and, before the latter, the veritable military junta that was the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), that brought about the sort of constitutional governance that presently prevail in the country (See “Akufo-Addo’s 2019 SONA ‘Disarming’ – Rawlings” Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 2/21/19).

And from what we have just learned about the leaked audiotape on which the voice of the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, is clearly heard plotting to destabilize the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party, we are reliably apprised of the fact that the Rawlings-fangled NDC thrives on the terroristic application of intimidation and violence. Consequently, it is an inevitable recipe for disaster for Nana Akufo-Addo to have called for a meeting of the minds, as it were, during his 2019 State of the Nation Address (SONA-3), as an amicable and civilized and politically constructive means of resolving the problem of the vigilante culture of violence which has been reigning in the country since the emergence of the then hitherto completely anonymous Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings on Ghana’s political landscape in June 1979.

But that Chairman Rawlings has unapologetically continued to annually celebrate the bloody butchery that was the so-called June 4^th Revolution, in open defiance of a Supreme Court decision, ought to be clear to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that, at best, his otherwise all-too-civilized call for the leaders of the country’s two major political parties to confer and resolve the vigilante menace that are the existence of such posse comitatus as the Azorka Boys, the Hawks, the Taskforce and the Bolga-Bulldogs and Delta forces, among a host of other political party-affiliated vigilante groups, may be aptly reckoned to be scandalously naïve. Indeed, reading about Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo’s leaked audiotape recording, in which the National Chairman of the NDC criminally calls for the systematic targeting of certain key operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party, unimpeachably backs my previous assertion that the National Democratic Congress is a veritable and an incorrigibly terrorist organization which, if the laws of our land were strictly enforced, would not exist.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, in the wake of the Ayawaso-West Wuogon parliamentary byelection – actually a little over a month ago, as of this press preparation – former President John Dramani Mahama, who recently got himself elected as the NDC’s Presidential Candidate for Election 2020, smugly and shamelessly boasted to the nation that the leaders of his party prided themselves in the fact that the NDC was a “revolutionary” political organization whose bloody and murderous track-record could not be topped or surpassed by any other political party in the country. In the leaked audiotape, Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo also, allegedly, called for the targeting of Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, for vitriolic media attacks and reputation maiming as a strategic means of tilting the outcome of Election 2020 in favor of the National Democratic Congress.

As well, the targeted intimidation and, clearly, even the intended liquidation by Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo, a former Eastern Regional Minister, and his NDC Headquarters associates, of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), ought to unmistakably inform President Akufo-Addo that he has absolutely no other alternative, whatsoever, but to ruthlessly and unreservedly apply the coercive powers of our national security apparatus and the laws of the land to their utmost limits, if the peace, security and stability of the country are to be guaranteed. Make no mistake, in the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress, we are not, in any way, whatsoever, dealing with an enlightened group of law-respecting and law-abiding Ghanaian citizens here.

Indeed, when they are not busy thumbing their noses at members of the Supreme Court of Ghana, or causing the summary abduction and cold-calculated execution, Mafia-class, of the members of the highest court of the land, the NDC’s leaders are either cavalierly defying Supreme Court decisions or threatening to either maim, dismember, desecrate or deflorate the chastity of a female Chief Justice with the brazen complicity of an NDC-sponsored President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, such as was scandalously witnessed under the tandem watches of Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and John Dramani Mahama. You see, Dear Reader, we are talking about clinically certified moral reprobates here, make no mistake.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 3, 2018
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net