Two Idiots in the EC Strongroom?

He is not calling Messrs. Joseph “Rojo” Mettle-Nunoo – I hope I have his first name down pat or accurately written out – and Michael Kpessa-Whyte the exact same words, but the caption of this column is precisely the conclusion that any critically thinking reader comes to, when one reads the Facebook Wall reaction of freelance investigative journalist Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni on the rather ludicrous testimony of these two foremost witnesses in the 2020 Presidential-Election Petition filed by former President John “Airbus-Payola” Dramani Mahama before the Justices of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG). The Manasseh or Awuni Facebook Wall Reaction is captioned “Election Petition: Why Didn’t You Rest at Home If You Trusted the EC Chairperson – Manasseh to Petitioner[sic]” Ghanaweb.com 2/7/21).

The caption of Mr. Awuni’s reaction writeup should be “Petitioners,” not “Petitioner,” but the thrust and the subjects of his query are unmistakable. It has to do with the explanation provided the seven supreme bench jurists who are currently hearing the Mahama-filed 2020 Presidential-Election Petition, in which the former President claims that neither he nor President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo crossed the constitutionally mandated 50-percent-plus-1 of the total valid votes cast in the December 7, 2020 Presidential Election, and that Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), egregiously erred when on December 9, that is, barely 48 hours after the polls closed, the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) declared the incumbent President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo the undisputed winner of the 2020 Presidential Election.

Now, what Messrs. Mettle-Nunoo and Kpessa-Whyte are claiming is that just before the IEC Chairperson declared the man who appointed her to the job winner of the 2020 Presidential Election, these two men were, in retrospect, strategically finessed or tricked out of the Strongroom or Command Center of the National Headquarters of the Electoral Commission, so as to enable Mrs. Mensa cheat in favor of Nana Akufo-Addo, in much the same way that in the wake of the 2012 Presidential Election, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress, publicly noted that a fraudulent victory had been called in favor of an extant incumbent President John “Expedition-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan. The preceding Asiedu-Nketia testimony, plus what Dr. Afari-Gyan himself told the Justice William Atuguba-presided panel of the Supreme Court, in a sworn testimony, is what prompts me to vehemently disagree with Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni that, somehow, the image and reputation of the Electoral Commission was in ship shape or gloriously intact until a publicly and globally humiliated Dr. Afari-Gyan was forced to retire.

Actually, it was the former University of Ghana political scientist who effectively and definitively dipped the image and reputation of the EC to its lowest ebb or level ever, when Dr. Afari-Gyan openly admitted to the Atuguba panel that after 20-plus-years of holding the job of EC Chairperson, the Bono Region native still did not know what the basic electoral terms of “Overvoting” and “Under-Voting” meant, although the man who had, reportedly, deliberately and criminally kept reversing his date of birth as the years went by, perhaps in hopes of expiring on the job, had absolutely no problem admitting that, indeed, a remarkable percentage of underage minors had been deliberately registered to vote with the full knowledge and approval of Dr. Afari-Gyan by some key operatives of both major political parties, namely, the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party. This is the morally and legally reprobate character that Mr. Awuni would have his readers believe is the finest personality to have been named to the highly sensitive post of Chairperson of Ghana’s Electoral Commission.

Why is the simple truth of Dr. Afari-Gyan’s incomparably gross administrative incompetence so difficult for investigative journalists like Mr. Awuni, who pride themselves in being first-rate at what they do, to admit? On the other hand, the self-proclaimed “Bongo Boy” is smack on target to impugn the common sense of Messrs. Kpessa-Whyte who, it ought to have become very obvious by now, obtained his doctorate in Arrant Stupidity; and Mettle-Nunoo, for vacating their post in the Strongroom of the EC, with the very curious and inexcusably scandalous pretext that Mrs. Jean Mensa, the very person because of whose purportedly dubious credibility these two men had been posted to the EC’s Strongroom to ensure a valid and credible electoral outcome had, somehow, convinced these two Mahama lookalike knuckleheads – my profound apologies to Ms. Tracey Boakye – that the most effective means of policing a wily Jean Mensa was to simultaneously vacate their posts in the EC’s Strongroom, at precisely the very moment that their presence and vigilance were most needed, in order to consult with Little Dramani in the latter’s private residence over the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. Shegelege!

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

February 7, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]