Naana Opoku-Agyemang Was Addressing John Mahama

On the face of it, it was the perfect storm of a speech to present; however, when it is critically examined, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s inaugural address to the nation as the Presidential Running-Mate of former President John Dramani Mahama, spoke more profoundly and poignantly about the moral deficiencies and depravity of the protagonist of Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s own party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), than she might have obviously intended for the leaders and members of the party of her her main political opponents of the Akufo-Addo-led ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “Everyone’s Ancestor Has Been a Worthy Contributor to Ghana, Let No One Question Your Ghanaianness – Jane Naana” Modernghana.com 7/28/20).

Well, on the question of “tribal bigotry” or ethnic chauvinism, the former First Female Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast may do well to vividly recall the fact that it was the then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama who stood in the heart of the Tamale municipality and despicably and shamelessly called on all Dagombas and Gonjas, as well as all northern-descended Ghanaian citizens, not to vote for the “Kabonga Dwarf.” Now, of course, we all know who this unspeakably racist and ethnically bigoted political judgment call was in reference to. As well, where was Mr. Mahama’s running-mate – of course, she was the teacher-trainee allowance extorting Education Minister – when the then substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana stood before a respectable plenary session of the Akyem-Abuakwa Traditional Council and, in the presence of His Majesty, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, luridly thumbed his nose at the Okyenhene and contemptuously declared Kyebi, the ancient royal Okyeman capital, to be the “Galamsey Capital of Ghana.”

And then, having fully satisfied himself with his rancid verbal abuse of the Okyenhene and Okyeman, Mr. Mahama helicoptered off to the Central Region, Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s own moorings or home turf, and contracted local Galamsyers to plug up deadly mine pits in exchange for generous compensatory payments. Okyeman could go to hell or wherever the pigs scavenged for swill. You see, as I often say, God is not stupid. No. Not by any stretch of the human imagination. The Law of Karma, as my 12-year-old son, Papa Yaw Sintim-Aboagye Okoampa-Ahoofe, would readily tell you, works in rapid and mysterious ways. Sooner than later, your own evil ways and misdeeds will catch up with you.

I mean, is Naana Opoku-Agyemang saying that just because our present national and international boundaries were arbitrarily and, for the most part, irrationally drawn by European colonizers, they should be recklessly left open or be criminally left unguarded periodically so that neighboring non-Ghanaian foreign nationals swamp the country, temporarily, to determine the critical question of who gets to govern Ghana for the next four years? You see, this sort of cynical argument or trend of thought is rather unscholarly and downright silly. In principle, everybody’s ancestor may be envisaged to have significantly contributed to the creation and development of the land space that we presently call Ghana. But, of course, the practical reality is that not everybody’s ancestor was either crowned a king or the spokesperson of a king or even a courtier. Some ancestors were irredeemable slavers, traitors and nation-wreckers. There are no ifs and buts here.

If Nana Opoku-Agyemang doubts the preceding observation, she would need to seriously interrogate the vehement exclusivist and deliberately discriminatory Mahama education policy of fierce opposition to the Akufo-Addo-implemented fee-free Senior High School System, and even the farcical partial turnaround proposed policy of “Progressively Fee-Free” SHS System. The relevant question here is: Why should access to Senior High School for Ghanaian youths be made “progressively fee-free,” if, indeed, all of our ancestors equally contributed to the creation and development of the Modern Ghanaian State? And just which ethnicity or regionally located of our youths gets to first tap into this “progressively fee-free” Senior High School System? This is the kind of National Democratic Congress-concocted barbarous and devious policy of Social Darwinism, viciously and insensitively disguised as Social Democracy, that I am talking about.

On the question of the barbaric and culturally benighted and primitive stoning death of 90-year-old Maame Akua Denteh, Prof. Opoku-Agyemang had better ask the man who made her his running-mate for the 2020 Presidential Election, why former First Lady Lordina Mahama, with the equally scandalous, primitive and criminal complicity of Little Dramani, facilely consented to building several “Witch Villages” and segregated settlements in northern Ghana – under the tenure of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress – where the execrable practice of “Witch-Hunting and Killing” runs riotously rampant, under the morally untenable guise of “protecting” these most vulnerable members of Ghanaian society, when the most sensible and effective approach to dealing with this inexcusable cultural menace ought to have been the capital prohibition of such insufferably bestial practice of unspeakable human depravity. The death penalty, that is.

Now, where are the much-touted feminist advocacy credentials of Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the extant Mahama-appointed Education Minister here? In other words, what did the firebrand feminist advocate in Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the substantive Minister of Education, at the time, do about this most harrowing instance of human depravity? Or are we to believe that the discipline of education, the professional specialty of Naana Opoku-Agyemang, has absolutely nothing to teach us about cultural enlightenment and moral refinement? Look at the woman in the mirror, Naana!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 30, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]