NDC Cannot Win the Media War, Trust Me

Just as I was preparing to deliver my personal opinion on The Herald newspaper’s article captioned “Togolese Connection to Volta Secessionists’ Agenda Revealed” (Ghanaweb.com 10/3/20), I chanced across the videoclip of an interview granted by Information Minister Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah to one of the major Ghanaian FM radio stations – it was actually a simulcast or multicast, with several media components – in which the Ofoase-Ayirebi New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament cautioned the media and the general public against any rush to judgment vis-à-vis the fact of whether some Togolese nationals were in cahoots with the military wing of the so-called Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSGF) terrorist organization called the Western Togoland Secessionists.

You see, the news article referenced above has the arrested members of the Western Togoland Terrorist Organization being represented in court by a Togolese national by the name of Mr. Martial Akakpo. But, of course, contrary to what the blindly pro-National Democratic Congress Herald newspaper would have the global Ghanaian community believe, according to Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah, all 31, so far, arrested Western Togoland criminal suspects are being represented by a legal practitioner who is a bona fide Ghanaian citizen. Now, I don’t know whether the Information Minister, in the aforementioned interview that he granted the FM radio station, the video clip was embedded on the Ghanaweb.com website, was referring to the same Mr. Martial Akakpo that the Herald newspaper claims has been representing the terror suspects.

In the article, largely a professional profile of Mr. Akakpo, who is also described as a key legal counsel or representative of the Faure Gnassingbe regime, we are subtly or implicitly made to understand that the Togolese government may be smack behind the dastardly and boorish activities of the Kudzordzi Gang. The latter, of course, refers to the dithering septuagenarian or octogenarian leader of the so-called Homeland Study Group Foundation, namely, Mr. Charles Komi Kudzordzi. The point here is that factoring the name of Mr. Martial Akakpo into the equation of the Western Togoland Terrorist Organization’s violent activities immediately brought into sharp focus, the possible involvement of the Gnassingbe regime. Now, this would be tantamount to a declaration of war by the Togolese government against its Ghanaian counterpart, a war that, even as one Prof. Kofi Agyekum modestly cast it, recently, the Togolese cannot win.

Well, I personally choose not to vouch that ominously far, because beating up the family dog, literally speaking, is no remarkable act of heroism. We have not done this yet, but perhaps it is about time that those of us bona fide Ghanaian citizens who are thoroughly satisfied with the present state and shape of our territorial boundaries pointed out to the Western Togoland Secessionists that there are bona fide Togolese nationals, cut off by Mount Afadjato, who may equally need to be “rescued” and brought home to be with their blood brothers, sisters and relatives in “Far-Western Trans-Volta Togoland.” Do we take up arms to bring such fervid desire or wish to fruition? Dear Reader, you just think about it.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

October 4, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]