Always Two Sides to a Story

As it turns out, the story of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor’s falling out with the New Patriotic Party’s stentorian Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, goes a little deeper than Mr. Kufuor’s widely known and long-expected choice and/or preference of Mr. Alan Kwadwo Kyeremateng, the current Minister for Trade and Industry, over the 16 other Presidential Candidates in the runup to the 2008 General Election. But, of course, being an epically good self-serving storyteller that he has always been known to be, Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, apparently, chooses to tell that one big story that makes him seem like the very unfortunate political underdog who wisely gambled with his fortunes and made it big and heroic (See “Kufuor Versus Kennedy Agyapong Feud Goes Deeper Than Partisan Politics – Adom-Otchere” Ghanaweb.com 6/28/20).

It turns out, like all things with the imprint of Kennedy Agyapong, it was more about money than politics. You see, even recently, in the Trade Fair Site demolition impasse, Mr. Agyapong went to bat for the longtime Ahwoi lackey, Mr. Raymond Archer, against my very own niece and Managing-Director of the Trade Fair Company, Dr. Agnes Adu, on grounds that Mr. Archer was a businessman with employees which, in the opinion of the NET-2 TV proprietor, meant that Mr. Archer was a far more significant contributor to the development of the nation’s economy than Dr. Adu who, by the way, also owned at least two sizable businesses right here in the United States, in the State of Georgia, to be precise, in the Eye-Care Industry. You see, in staunchly backing up Mr. Archer, the former tabloid gossip and rumor-mongering newspaper editor, Mr. Agyapong, implicitly, per his own words, was far more concerned about ensuring that his business conglomerate got full protection in the highly unlikely event of the kleptocratic John Dramani Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) being voted back to power, come December 2020.

It was far less about the fact of whether the Managing-Director of the Trade Fair Company was legally empowered to take the decision and action that she had taken in clearing out some dozen, or so, squatters at the Trade Fair Site, in order to make way for the direly needed modernization of the site and the development of the same into a globally recognized multi-purpose business hub and easily one of the biggest employers in the West African subregion, if not the entire African continent. It would shortly pan out that not only had the demolition exercise been executed with such professional deft and common sense, in such as way that the properties of each and every squatter had been left intact – only the outer structures had been surgically removed – the recalcitrant squatters had actually been given nearly two years to clear out of the site, with the very business-savvy option of returning to a renewed, revitalized and more attractive and commercially fetching and massive revenue-generating environment.

And, by the way, I had wanted to add at the time, in the two-part column that I wrote on the subject, that you have not really arrived in the field of business entrepreneurship as an African or Black person and, in Dr. Adu’s case, a woman on top of it all, until you have been able to seriously run a viable and a significant business or businesses right here in the United States of America, or any one of the major Western industrialized economies, where the tax laws are rigidly enforced and failure to promptly fulfill one’s business-tax obligations could easily land the culprit/defaulter in jail, no questions asked. You see, in Ghana, tax-law enforcement is so weak and almost nonexistent that only conscientious and socially responsible Bozos are known to pay their taxes the way they would be doing, if they lived right here in the United States.

Anyway, we are also informed by Mr. Paul Adom-Otchere, host of the Metro-TV flagship talking-heads program, “Good Evening Ghana,” that the much-told story about the rude sacking of Mr. Agyapong from the well-appointed Agyekum-Kufuor residence had more to do with the scamming of Mr. Kufuor’s son in a business deal with presumably a Kennedy Agyapong acquaintance by the name of Kwame Poku. We are not given the name of the Kufuor son who was involved in the ill-fated business transaction with Mr. Poku. But it really does not matter, anyhow; all that matters is the fact that you just can’t take every tale told by the “President of the Assin Republic,” my profound apologies to Mr. Agyapong’s “Baby Mama,” at face value. Every Kennedy Agyapong tale, as they say, ought to be taken “with a pinch of salt.” I would even go a bit further by adding that every Kennedy Agyapong tale must be taken with “a handful of alligator peppers.” Still, I have been relishing every bit of the juicy revolutionary turmoil that Mr. Agyapong has been cooking in the patent sham that is the One-Man Church industry.

And, oh, by the way, just recently, my niece, Dr. Adu, won a remarkable court decision and some damages against Mr. Archer and his sponsors and sympathizers. I am assuming this also includes the President of the Assin Republic. I almost forgot this juicy part of the Trade Fair Site Saga. It is deeply etched in our DNA. I am talking about winning battles in court. Yes, winning is indelibly etched in the blood of the Sintim-Aboagye, Adu and Amoh clansmen and women of Akyem-Asiakwa.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 28, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]