I don’t know the specific questions that were posed to Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the newly vetted and confirmed Energy Minister and the ruling New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Manhyia-South Constituency, but you can be darned certain that when the questions are coming from Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the North-Tongu Constituency, in the Volta Region, and Mr. Alhassan Suhuyini, the NDC’s Member of Parliament for Tamale-North, in the Northern Region, the caliber of questions are highly unlikely to be gravid or impregnated with much that verge on wisdom and common sense.
Which was why I could not help but be wracked with laughter, of the acutely disdainful kind, by the way, when Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority Caucus Leader, was reported by the media to have counseled Napo – as Dr. Opoku-Prempeh is popularly known – to exercise a lot of patience and glottal discipline, if the grandson of Nana Prempeh, II, desired to go far in life. I suppose what Mr. Iddrisu meant by the latter had to do with political power and prominence (See “Pray for Your Tongue and Temperament – Haruna Iddrisu Scolds Matthew Opoku-Prempeh” Ghanaweb.com 2/13/21).
This is the sort of counsel that Mr. Iddrisu ought to have reserved for the likes of Messrs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Suhuyini, two of the most infamously uncouth and brash National Democratic Congress’s operatives who the late former President Jeremiah John Rawlings once sarcastically described as “Babies with sharp teeth.” Indeed, as I vividly recall, it was Mr. Suhuyini, the Tamale-North MP, who, as a freshman Representative of Ghana’s Parliament, or National Assembly, rudely and cantankerously declared that there were no “Elders or Youths” in Ghana’s Parliament; neither did there exist any veterans nor novices or novitiates, for that matter, or parliamentary back-benchers, because each and every Member of Parliament had been duly elected by his/her constituents, equally like all 275 Members of our National Assembly.
I vividly recall once firing off a column in which I painstakingly explained to this former radio station disk jockey that the fact that one got on the same bus with one’s own biological father at the same time, and might even have strap-hanged together, absolutely in no way implied that both straphanging passengers were either classmates or coequals. In sum, this is not the caliber of politician that should have been named to the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC). Which was why I was not the least bit flabbergasted to learn that Dr. Opoku-Prempeh had not taken kindly to the rather farcical attempt by the Tamale-North NDC-MP to luridly subject the former Education Minister to what might aptly be termed as the “Mahama Loyalty or Salaaming Litmus Test.” Asking totally irrelevant questions about what the vetting candidate had said about the former President that was widely deemed to be unflattering by fanatical Mahama lickspittles and shills like Messrs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Suhuyini, could only logically draw the sort of contempt that Dr. Opoku-Prempeh is alleged to have expressed towards two of the most morally contemptible members of Ghana’s Parliament.
In cavalierly presuming to upbraid the then Energy Minister-Designate, Mr. Iddrisu may have conveniently forgotten his own ignoble track-record of rudely sparring with former House Speaker Aaron Michael Oquaye, as well as the unenviable scofflaw political track-record of Mr. Ablakwa, the pet poodle of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills. And on the latter count, of course, the obvious reference is to the criminal and judicially impeachable brazen defiance of the decision of the Georgina Theodora Wood-presided Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) by Messrs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Edward Omane-Boamah, with the staunch and equally criminal backing of the then President John Evans Atta-Mills, in the matter of the illegal seizure of some real-estate and landed properties legitimately acquired by Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, late, the extant National Chairman of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Both Messrs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Omane-Boamah have on legion occasions impugned the dignity, reputation and common sense of the now-President Akufo-Addo; so, it comes as rather strange and morally outrageous that the Tamale-South NDC-MP should be implicitly demanding an apology from Dr. Opoku-Prempeh for daring to put unconscionable political thugs and juvenile delinquents like Messrs. Suhuyini and Okudzeto-Ablakwa in their place. If anybody or institutional establishment is obligated to render an apology to any personality or political establishment in the country, it is definitely the top-echelon leadership of the National Democratic Congress, for so cavalierly presuming that they could pack our taxpayer-underwritten parliamentary seats and committees with “fufu-heads” and abominable political apologies like the Okudzetos and Suhuyinis of our national political playground.
*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 6, 2021
E-mail: [email protected]
We’ll no longer tolerate your empty, unwarranted attacks – TUC blasts Prof Adei
Bawumia donates GHc200,000 to support Madina fire victims
IMF to disburse US$360million third tranche to Ghana without creditors MoU
Truck owner share insights into train collision incident
Paramount chief of Bassare Traditional Area passes on
Two teachers in court over alleged illegal possession of BECE papers
Sunyani: Victim allegedly shot by traditional warriors appeals for justice
Mahama vows to scrap teacher licensure exams, review Free SHS policy
Government will replace burnt Madina shops with a new three-story, 120-store fac...
