Huudu Yahaya Is One of the Shameless Indemnity Clause-Protected Rogues of Ghanaian Politics

If any group or class of Ghanaian citizens qualify to morally and authoritatively assess the caliber and contribution of the late former President Jerry John Rawlings to the development or the underdevelopment of Ghana, that group or class of Ghanaians obviously does not include Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, described as the first General-Secretary of Ghana’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). In a tribute in memory of the acclaimed Founding-Father of the NDC and the Chairman of the defunct junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), Mr. Yahaya would have Ghanaians believe that, somehow, among the most salient contributions of the late Mr. Rawlings to the development of our beloved country is democratic stability (See “Remember Rawlings for His Positives, Not the Few Wrongs – Huudu Yahaya” Ghanaweb.com 1/28/21).

Mr. Yahaya, a cabinet member of the PNDC junta, conveniently ignores the inescapable fact that Chairman Rawlings’ pathologically megalomaniacal and dictatorial proclivities are the reason why it took Ghana nearly two decades to embark on the sort of “stable democracy” that the former Rawlings lieutenant is talking about. In the main, it ought not be forgotten that the so-called June 4^th Revolution, in 1979, that first brought the hitherto totally unknown Ghana Airforce Pilot to national attention and onto our national political podium and landscape, came on the crest of the healthy and constructive decision by the senior-ranking members of the Ghana Armed Forces, led by Gen. FWK Akuffo, an Akufo-Addo relative, to put an effective end to the hitherto erratic and socioeconomically, morally and psychologically regressive intervention in our national civic political culture by the military.

You see, in June 1979, when Chairman Rawlings and his men, so-called, struck, the seven-year ban on partisan political activities in the country had been lifted, and at least some 10 political parties and their leaders were already engaged in a vigorous and robust campaign for the Presidency and Parliamentary Representation. The most significant of the leaders of the dozen or so political parties were Dr. Hilla “Babini” Limann, of the Nkrumah-leaning People’s National Party (PNP); Mr. Victor Owusu, of the Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia-inspired Popular-Front Party (PFP); Mr. William “Paa Willie” Ofori-Atta, of the Gen. AA Afrifa -controlled and the Dr. JB Danquah-inspired United National Convention (UNC); and Col (Rd) Frank George Bernasko, of the Action Congress Party (ACP).

In other words, Ghanaians fully appreciated the practical value of constitutional democracy relatively and significantly long before Chairman Rawlings and his infamous Abongo Boys and Girls obtruded the national political landscape. It is therefore clearly in a desperate bid to making the so-called Rawlings Revolution seem organically relevant to the natural order of Ghana’s postcolonial political culture that self-serving political opportunists like Mr. Huudu Yahaya have presumed to shamelessly lecture the rest of us on their own artificially, mendaciously and conveniently concocted history of the period herein discussed. We must equally, poignantly and significantly underscore the fact that the 31 December 1981, overthrow of the democratically elected government of Dr. Limann was primarily the handicraft of a cabal of Northern-Descended and Anlo-Ewe-Descended megalomaniacal and grossly misguided Ghanaian soldiers and their equally ethnocentric and ethnic chauvinist allies among the general population.

The Rawlings Gang simply took convenient Machiavellian advantage of an economic crisis singularly created by the politically and philosophically benighted decision by our men in uniform, so-called, to criminally butt into an area of our national life in which they had little to absolutely zilch aptitude, talent and expertise, short of their ability to use the Ghanaian taxpayer-purchased weaponry to literally hold the citizenry and the economy of our beloved nation hostage. The Rawlings Revolution could not have advanced the hitherto salutary and civilized newly rekindled phase of democratic governance and development, unarguably because of the fierce struggle of civically and democratically minded patriots like the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and, before the latter, national political titans like the late Prof. Albert A. Adu-Boahen, Messrs. William “Paa Willie” Ofori-Atta, JB da Rocha, Peter Ala Adjetey, JH Mensah, among a host of other bold and courageous Ghanaian citizens.

To be certain, left to Chairman Rawlings alone, Ghana would today be a faux-democratic monarchical dynasty, like Togo, run by the Rawlings-Agbotui Clan and its allies, as we all shockingly and scandalously witnessed in Sunyani, the Bono Region’s Capital, in 2010, when Chairman Rawlings crudely attempted to remove an incumbent President John Evans Atta-Mills, Mr. Rawlings’ personally handpicked former Arch-Lieutenant, at the party’s congressional confab, in hopes of replacing the former University of Ghana Law School Professor with his wife and lock-stepping partner and staunch and perennial accomplice in “revolutionary” crimes, to wit, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. You see, this is the kind of True History of the Provisional/National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) that criminally irreligious Mecca-Have-Beens like Alhaji Huudu Yahaya would rather not have our talented, genius and progressive-minded youths be apprised of and educated about.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 28, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]