When Did The Akyem Become Political Spare Tires to Gonja Mahama?

He has tried this gimmick times without number and it hasn’t worked in each and every one of those cases, so I really don’t know why, once again, Candidate John Dramani Mahama would scandalously attempt to use a bona fide Akyem royal to sabotage another bona fide Akyem royal in the person of His Excellency the President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, easily the most progressive and visionary leader of Ghana Fourth Republic. Add to the preceding the fact that the post of Vice-President in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is decidedly and effectively equivalent to that of a Watchman or a Butler, or Housekeeper, a post requiring absolutely no cranial or intellectual muscle-flexing, and the alleged choice of Mr. Kingsley Awuah-Darko, the former simultaneous Managing-Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) and the Bulk Oil Supply and Storage (BOST) Company, as the Presidential Running-Mate of Candidate John Dramani Mahama could not be more ludicrous (See “Mahama to Name Awuah-Darko as Running Mate?” DailyMail.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/16/20).

The first problem that the former Atta-Mills Arch-Lieutenant has in settling on an Akyem citizen of the quite remarkable caliber of Mr. Awuah-Darko as his running-mate is that stereotypically speaking, the Akyem, irrespective of administrative or political division or affiliation, do not make good second-banana players. By and large, we tend to have our own independent ways of thinking and do not readily fall into the role of servile genuflectors, as Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, widow of the late former Vice-President Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, heart-wrenchingly told the teeming audience of mourners and sympathizers at the State-sponsored funeral and memorial service for the former Mahama second-bananas. We are also far more administratively competent and better educated than a payola- and bribe-prone and hopelessly grubby Candidate John Dramani Mahama.

To be certain, I, personally, did not see any decent Asante-descended National Democratic Congress’ stalwart accepting this menial domestic factotum’s work that has, by the way, become well established as a post best suited to Fante-descended passive players as the late Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills and Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, two stereotypical morbidly self-effacing Fante indigenes who seem to have been specially tailored for the job of Presidential Second-Bananas, or vice-versa, of the Jeremiah John Rawlings-fangled National Democratic Congress.

I don’t know much about Mr. Awuah-Darko, besides the quite obvious fact of our “distant” relationship, in mainstream Euro-American parlance, and our consanguineal connection to both the Akyem-Nkronso and Akyem-Tafo royal families. So, I would rather reserve any further comments until I have learned much more about the man from my Akyem-Tafo “Awuah” relatives and, perhaps, my Akyem-Begoro “Sintim-Aboagye” relatives as well. In the meantime, suffice it to say, however, that if the purported selection of Mr. Awuah-Darko is, somehow, aimed at papering over the bestial, criminal and brutal assassination of Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, then the Kingmakers of the National Democratic Congress have definitely made a great mistake and the most wrongful choice, because the determination to get to the bottom of the brutal political slaying of the extant New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Akyem-Abuakwa-North Constituency is not going away anytime soon.

And so is the imperative need of getting to the bottom of the inescapably apparent brutal and strategic assassination of the then-President John Evans Atta-Mills going away anytime soon. If the alleged selection of Mr. Awuah Darko as the running-mate of a grossly incompetent payola-addicted Candidate Mahama was what prompted Mr. Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe to make his farcical prediction of President Akufo-Addo’s becoming a one-term president, then the Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings’ parliamentary-seat-jacking lawyer is in for a rude awakening. You see, as a people, the Akyem are not such a cheap political pushovers, as the likes of Messrs. Mahama and Tamakloe would have the rest of the nation believe.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 16, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]