These Boko Haram-Inspired NDC Lecturers Cannot Sabotage Ghanaian Democracy

I have skimmed the so-called “Cautionary Note” signed by some 100 Left-leaning bona fide National Democratic Congress’ lecturers, for the most part, and find the same to be absolutely without merit. To be certain, the very crude, benighted, presumptuous and pathetic tenor of the letter underscores the reason for the effective collapse and virtual non-competitiveness of higher education in the country; for this inexcusably desultory and logically scandalous missive lacks common sense, decorum and any credible appreciation for the laws of our land. Very likely, the vast majority of the signatories to this virtual declaration of war on Ghana’s Parliament and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and, in effect, the country at large, are indisputably Indemnity Clause-protected criminals and political scam-artists who have absolutely no right, whatsoever, to parade themselves and their dubious academic and professional credentials before the Ghanaian citizenry and the global community at large.

These moral reprobates and reprehensible sources of national embarrassment must rest assured that absolutely no amount of bluster or raw intimidation will turn back the inexorable clock of Ghanaian democracy (See “New Register: Over 100 University Lecturers Caution Jean Mensa [Check Names and Universities]” Modernghana.com 6/9/20). The noetic and sophistic argument of the afore-referenced lecturers is rather effete and darn too pedestrian and jaded to warrant any time-wasting point-by-point response to the same, such as the present heavily contaminated National Voters’ Register (NVR) having been used to conduct the 2016 General Election without any controversy or virulent dispute across our national political landscape. No such argument or ratiocinative posture could be more preposterous.

First of all, as far back as 2013, during the Akufo-Addo- and Bawumia-led 2012 Presidential Election Petition, the extant Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) and the longest-serving personnel at the post, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, publicly admitted to the Justice William Atuguba-presided Supreme Court Panel that adjudicated the 2012 Presidential Election Petition that, indeed, there had been the deliberate bloating of the National Voters’ Register, even though Dr. Afari-Gyan also sheepishly confessed that he did not know what the basic terminologies of “Overvoting” and “Under-Voting” meant, vis-à-vis the question of whether, indeed, our National Voters’ Register had been criminally and inordinately bloated. The Supreme Court itself concluded at the time that, indeed, there were more registrants on the National Voters’ Register than the size or magnitude of Ghana’s adult population warranted.

We must also clearly and dispassionately bear in mind that the leaders, members, supporters and sympathizers of the country’s then main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) went into the 2016 General Election literally kicking and screaming over the abject lack of credibility over the National Biometric Voters’ Register (NBVR). The fact that the current Voters’ Register has been used to conduct Regional Referenda/ Referendums, Parliamentary Byelections and District Assembly Elections is in spite of our heavily and unacceptably contaminated National Voters’ Register and not because of it. It is also risible for 100 lecturers of dubious personal character profiles and professional credentials to append their names and signatures to a patently unprofessional, impertinent and decidedly intellectually insulting terror-mongering letter, knowing very well that the decision by Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa and the Independent Electoral Commission to compile a new National Voters’ Register was primarily predicated on a Supreme Court decision, and has the unimpeachable backing of the highest legislative body or constitutional establishment of the land, to wit, Ghana’s Parliament.

Dear Reader, Could a minuscule 100 lecturers of questionable character profiles and civic and professional credentials, for the most part, be more statutorily credible and civically and politically significant than the popularly elected representatives of the Ghanaian people, the members of our National Assembly? And, oh, did any of these professorial scam-artists take a head count of all the Ghanaian lecturers and professors in the country who did not append their names and signatures to this scatological Boko Haram-inspired cheap and vacuous threatening letter to Mrs. Adukwei Mensa? The National Security Minister and the Interior Minister, the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) and the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice may very well need to explore the extent to which Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution tolerates this intemperate incitement to hatred and national strife by the apparently Marijuana-toking gang of professorial thugs.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 9, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]