What Is Good for the Goose Is Equally Good for the Gander – Part 2

It beats my imagination why the operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) suppose that the investment experts who brokered the Agyapa Royalties Investment Deal ought to have come from their party, if the deal was to be deemed to be genuine (See “Agyapa Deal: Gabby Otchere-Darko’s Firm Pocketed US $ 103,000 – Kweku Baako” Ghanaweb.com 9/3/20). This is ironic because in flatly rejecting the December 17 Referendum, that sought to democratize and even up both local government and the national political terrain, the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, staunchly backed by the politically self-serving and morally regressive leaders of the National House of Chiefs, for the most part, clearly indicated that they were avid and impenitent believers and advocates of the winner-takes-all politics of the status quo. Which is why both the leaders and operatives of the parliamentary and ideological opposition have absolutely no genuine or worthwhile cause to complain about.

But, really, what I wanted to underscore here is the abject hypocrisy that Mr. Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako is talking about, which is that during the 20-year tenure of both the Jerry John Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the National Democratic Congress, contractual deals were routinely farmed out to both the conjugal and political bedmate of the self-righteous pontifical apostle of “Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice,” to wit, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and friends and associates of the Rawlingses. Curiously and ironically, the very same leaders of the National Democratic Congress who are railing against Mr. Gabriel Asare Otchere-Darko’s legal firm, Africa Legal Associates (ALA), for being sub-contractually ceded an apparently minor portion of the consultancy fees, for doing some of the legwork for the UK-based firm that was actually awarded the advisory or contract of the Agyapa Royalties Investment Deal, never raised any public hue or cry over Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ being ceded “sweetheart” contracts by her husband’s government.

Mr. Baako sees the preceding case scenario as a striking case of a conflict-of-interest of the procurement laws of the land. The infamous Ahwoi brothers, as some of their critics have recently alleged, in the apocalyptic aftermath of the publication of Prof. Kwamena Ahwoi’s “Working with Rawlings” memoir, were also routinely ceded non-competitive contracts by the “revolutionary” Rawlings junta and regimes. Somehow, in the case of the Akufo-Addo-led Administration of the New Patriotic Party, these same NDC operatives would have Ghanaians believe that, somehow, the relatives and political associates of President Akufo-Addo are second-class Ghanaian citizens who have absolutely no legal right to enjoy some of the same perks and privileges routinely taken for granted by the relatives, friends and associates of Mr. Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice.

We even have veritable “State Capture Engineers” and beneficiaries like Mr. Alexander (Kofi Mensah) Mould, the former Managing-Director of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), accusing President Akufo-Addo of the treasonous crime of State Capture. There is a scandalous irony here because it was the elder sister of the same Mr. Mould, to wit, Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, who, as the Atta-Mills-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice – Some well-deserved cabinet portfolio, isn’t it? – authorized the historically unprecedented Woyome Mega-Heist, in which a humongous GHȻ 51.2 Million was literally gifted the globally infamous Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the primary underwriter of the payola- and Judgment-Debt-wracked Mills-Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, which, according the fronting-thief, was divvied up among the front-row leaders of the National Democratic Congress, including an extant President John Evans Atta-Mills, who fiercely, shamelessly and publicly defended the “inalienable constitutional right” of Mr. Woyome to defraud and extort the Ghanaian taxpayer. Now, this is what real “State Capture” is about, Kofi Mensah.

Which is why he inexcusably insults the intelligence of the Ghanaian citizenry and, in particular, the Ghanaian voter, when the former GNPC’s Managing-Director haughtily and virulently accuses President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of “State Capture.” At any rate, criminally accusing Mr. Otchere-Darko, the Akufo-Addo cousin, of having been paid a scandalous consultancy or contractual advisory fee of $ 2 Million (USD) when, in reality, Mr. Otchere-Darko’s firm, Africa Legal Associates, was paid the clearly relatively diddly sum of $ 103, 000 (USD), reeks of nothing short of the inexcusably unconscionable. But that professional thieves like Mr. Mould would muster the chutzpah to self-righteously accuse Nana Akufo-Addo of the treasonable crime of “State Capture” is all the more sickening. But, of course, such dastardly gimmickry is all a part of the Machiavellian electioneering campaign strategy of a desperate and hopeless National Democratic Congress in the leadup to the 2020 general election.

The foregoing strategy unethically seeks to massively reap a bumper harvest where these ghost planters never sowed. In other words, political career scam-artists like Mr. Mould facilely suppose that they could insult the intelligence of the Ghanaian voter by suavely, albeit dishonestly, gaslighting our memory capacity. After all, what were such Mahama-engineered rackets like the Akonfem (Guinea Fowl) Scandal, the inexcusably tribalistic SADA, SUBAH and GUBAH, Bus Branding and GYEEDA but veritable and criminally untenable striking examples of “State Capture”? I will shortly make time to more fully answer this zealous Mahama shill who, in the profound exposé of Mr. Kennedy (Akompreko Kwame) Ohene Agyapong, thievishly and unconscionably initialed one of the most scandalous energy deals with the government of Equatorial Guinea.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 4, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]