Ade Coker Staunchly Backed Mistakes-Correcting Mahama

He told Ms. Dzifa Bampoe on the “First Take” talking-heads program that he finds it extremely difficult to accept the fact that some members of the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Caucus voted to approve the re-nomination of Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta as Finance Minister. This is rather strange and ironic because Mr. Ade Coker, the dynastic Greater-Accra Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), staunchly backed the Election 2020 Presidential Candidate of his own party who ran on the scandalously sterile platform of being allowed by Ghanaian voters to return to Jubilee House – which he insists on calling and renaming Flagstaff House – so that former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama could “correct my past mistakes.”

And yet, Chairman Ade Coker finds it to be morally insufferable and untenable for a “debt-stockpiling” Ken Ofori-Atta to be allowed back at the Finance Ministry, to put the country’s COVID-19-battered economy on a sound footing in the inimitably competent manner that he had done and was still doing long before this deadly global pandemic became a grim practical reality sometime in March of 2020 (See “Ofori-Atta Committed Perjury, His Consensus Approval Bad – Ade Coker” 3News.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/31/21). It is equally fascinating to reckon the fact that Mr. Ade Coker had absolutely no qualms backing the presidential re-nomination of Mr. Mahama, even after forensically authoritative evidence officially released by Judges of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in London clearly pointed to the fact that a then-Vice-President Mahama, against the background of vehement public denials, had criminally scammed the Ghanaian taxpayer to the humongous tune of the payola sum of at least € 5 Million (Euros).

Now, this is what real “perjury” looks and sounds like. And yet, Chairman Ade Coker would have the members of the Global Ghanaian Community (GGC) believe that it is only tantamount to “perjury” when the apparent evasion of the gospel truth is deemed to have been committed by a key operative of the New Patriotic Party, and not the National Democratic Congress. Then, we also have the Greater-Accra Chairman of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress also virulently accusing the leadership of the Akufo-Addo Administration of “State Capture” when, in fact, it was the leadership of the late Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), the direct and immediate parent of the present-day National Democratic Congress, that literally quartered up the Kwame Nkrumah-created Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC) and sold nearly every state-owned factory in Ghana to the leadership of the P/NDC at giveaway, far-below the going market prices.

One critic, a former fellow PNDC trucker, even called this NDC-fangled kleptocratic political culture the “Donkomization” of the capital and mineral wealth and resources of Ghana. Then also, what of the equally criminal attempt to literally gift Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the younger half-brother of former President John Dramani Mahama, nearly every significant operable or “mineable” mineral concession in the country? And, by the way, which leader from which political party establishment gave carte blanche exploitation access to the Changfang excavator operators from China to literally lay our landed and forestry resources and waterbodies to waste? Now, bring it on, Mr. Ade Coker, let’s talk about real “State Capture.”

He may also not know or even care to know about the fact that in the leadup to the 2020 General Election, some NDC’s electioneering-campaign propagandists were vigorously promising to revive the sort of predatory and environmentally destructive activities that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his cabinet appointees have been working studiously and strenuously around the clock to prevent, so that the country’s badly damaged forestry resources and heavily polluted waterbodies could be repaired and brought back to their natural, pristine state or condition. The incontrovertible fact of the matter is that historically and relatively speaking, NDC-sponsored governments have appointed far more controversial and grossly incompetent cabinet and executive operatives in all spheres of national endeavors than the New Patriotic Party.

The classical and striking cases of Messrs. Peprah, Tsikata, Selormey and Abuga Pele, among a legion of others, are in the record books and readily accessible to any bona fide Ghanaian citizens who care to know or discover the same. But what is even more significant, and Ade Coker and his associates ought to be explaining this to the general Ghanaian public, is precisely why a significant majority of the members of the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Caucus decided to vote massively by consensus to approve the re-nomination of Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta as Ghana’s Finance Minister. You see, voting by “consensus” clearly means that Mr. Ofori-Atta has creditably acquitted himself in his cabinet portfolio in ways that cannot be said of the Finance Minister’s predecessors like Messrs. Duffuor and Terkper, who literally ran the country’s economy aground and literally into the mud like the Japanese-owned giant cargo ship called “The Ever Given” that recently got stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal.

You see, it is this Allotey-Jacobs-like consensus approval of the job performance of Mr. Ofori-Atta that is giving the leadership of the National Democratic Congress the sort of multiple heartaches and headaches and heart-attacks that these downright desperate kleptocrats appear to be experiencing. The sad reality here, though, is that there is absolutely nothing that the Mahama/Asiedu-Nketia Gang can do about the classy nonesuch performance by Mr. Ofori-Atta. Among the Akan, there is this sagacious saying that “If you are too self-centered to praise me, your professional and moral superior, at least don’t tarnish my name and my hard-won image and reputation.” Would the Mahama/ Asiedu-Nketia Gang pay heed to this morally instructive maxim?

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 3, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]