COVID Education Is Not a Partisan Matter

The fact that Gilbert Abeiku Aggrey Santana, that is the official name given by Wikipedia of the 44-year-old well-known entertainment-industry empresario, did vigorously campaign for the seismically defeated Candidate John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama in the 2020 Presidential Election, ought not to be necessarily deemed to be a morally and functionally debilitating strike or blemish on the résumé or vita of this very popular radio and television host and celebrity, contrary to what some New Patriotic Party (NPP) insiders and operatives would have the rest of the general public believe (See “Abeiku Santana Campaigned Against Akufo-Addo So Why Give Him an Appointment? – NPP Man” RainbowRadioOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/5/21). We are also reliably informed that the subject of this column holds a Master of Tourism Degree from the University of Cape Coast and a Postgraduate Diploma in Public Administration from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), as well as an Advanced Certificate in Public Relations and Advertising from the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), among several others.

This is your ideal candidate for COVID Ambassador, if you really need one. And it well appears that the merit-scouting Akufo-Addo Administration is direly in need of a crackerjack team of COVID Ambassadors to help the nation stem the steadily rising tide of this global pandemic. Consequently, those virulently critical about the fact of whether Mr. Aggrey is really well-deserving of the aforementioned appointment may very well be blisteringly afflicted with the sort of “chicken”-sized memory banks with which former President Mahama was once reported to have disdainfully tagged the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters. Else, Nana Kwadwo Agyei Yeboah would not be throwing the sort of scandalously facile barb that the Communications Team Member of the ruling New Patriotic Party is reported to have furiously volleyed against the all-too-opportune appointment of Abeiku Santana as a COVID Ambassador by the operatives of Ghana’s COVID-19 Trust Fund.

Indeed, it goes without saying that in terms of the reach of audience in the country and even abroad, via YouTube and other social media, Mr. Santana, I prefer to call him Mr. Aggrey, has only a handful of rivals on Ground Zero. This man in his prime readily reminds yours truly of the legendary likes of Messrs. Godwin Avenorgbor, Mike Eghan and Charlie Sam, not to mention the even more versatile and legendary Mr. Carl Agyemang-Bannerman, of GBC-2’s “Solid Black” fame. And, of course, my own maternal Uncle Yaw Asamoah, also of the erstwhile GBC-2 and a native of Akyem-Amanfrom or Yirenkyiren-Amanfrom, the hometown of my paternal great-grandfather, Opanyin Kwadwo Bonti. The very first time that my late mother revealed to me this “Bonti” name of my paternal great-grandfather, that is, on my father’s mother’s side of the family, by the way, I got literally knocked off my couch with a bellyaching laughter. The name sounded very ancient and Akanistically “Bue!”

I would shortly learn to my delight and pleasant surprise that, in fact, the name “Bonti” was quite common among the Akan-speaking majority populace of Ghana. I would, for instance, learn that “Bonti” was the same name that subethnic Fantes had corrupted into “Bondzi,” perhaps as a result of the rather obtuse and fatuous copycatting of some godforsaken European governor in Elmina or Cape Coast or even one of those colonial-era district commissioners. At any rate, were Nana Kay, as Nana Kwadwo Agyei Yeboah is popularly known, not onanistically or orgiastically fiddling with the truth, he would have since long come to the sobering realization that over the course of at least the last 20 years, that is, almost since the inception of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, no major politician or statesman – I prefer to envisage Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a veritable statesman, rather than a politician – has been more crassly and vituperatively vilified by his own political party associates and rivals than the eldest son or dauphin of the famous Oxbridge-educated Chief Justice and later President Edward Akufo-Addo.

I am also very certain that the extent to which Abeiku Santana could be legitimately accused of downing the name and reputation of Nana Akufo-Addo far pales in impact and significance than the level and extent of the vitriol sallied at “The Little Man from Kyebi” by the likes of Messrs. Kwadwo Mpiani and the latter’s prime political benefactor and sometime boss who, for the sake of party harmony and even unity shall remain anonymous, at least for now, until it becomes very necessary to rudely unearth the same. You see, as a bona fide “Juabenite,” I love my Uncle Kofi Diawuo too dearly to cavalierly presume to drag his good and hallowed name and hard-earned reputation into this rather epiphenomenal or tangential discourse. You see, the fact of the matter is that when it comes to the uphill or epic battle against the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, there are absolutely no such political and/or ideological entities or establishments as the New Patriotic Party and/or the National Democratic Congress.

In other words, this deadly pandemic is absolutely no respecter of partisan colors and/or insignias. We are, all of us, one and the same, especially in the auspicious aftermath of an unprecedently clean landmark election in which Ghanaians from all walks of life, as it were, staunchly affirmed their unreserved faith in the visionary capacity of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to rally each and every Ghanaian into one familial household with a common destiny, as well as steel ourselves with irreversible determination to make our nation great and strong for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, as well as posterity, in ways and manners that have never been known, witnessed or experienced in living memory.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 6, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]