Mischievous Kofi Diawuo

Just because Mr. John Agyekum (Kofi Diawuo) Kufuor alleges that Mr. Sam Jonah has “pedigree,” whatever that means, does not automatically in absolutely anyway mean or imply that when the former Managing-Director of the globally famous Asante (Ashanti) Goldfields Corporation (AGC) says that Ghana is fast creeping back into a “Culture of Silence,” that such clearly jaundiced remark from a pontifically self-described “Senior Citizen” of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana must be taken at face value or with the kind of gravitas or intellectual and moral significance that it clearly does not deserve (“Don’t Treat Sam Jonah’s Culture of Silence Claim Lightly – Kufuor” Modernghana.com 4/27/21).

Well, about the only seemingly significant aspect of what Mr. Jonah, a Knight of the British Empire, reportedly told an audience of some Accra-based international Rotarians is the fact that this patently prejudicial and downright mischievous remark was made on the 49^th Anniversary of the epochal transitioning of Ghana’s first and seminal postcolonial leader, to wit, President Francis Kofi-Nwia Kwame Nkrumah, better known globally as Mr. Kwame Nkrumah and, oftentimes, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

On the other hand, when the late Prof. Albert A. Adu-Boahen described the veritable reign-of-terror that prevailed under the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta regime of the then-Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, even the latter protagonist soberly and unreservedly agreed with the then-Head/Chairman of the Department of History at the country’s flagship tertiary academy, the University of Ghana, Legon.

Chairman Rawlings would shortly be publicly heard earnestly and wistfully pleading with Ghanaians to boldly come out of their terror-induced shells and constructively offer the nation and the extant government of his Provisional National Defense Council the requisite or necessary direction which his junta needed to carry our beloved nation on the right path to development and prosperity,

Now, the fact of whether, indeed, Chairman Rawlings was darn serious about his clarion call for Ghanaians not to play the unsavory peacock-like role of passive bystanders and spectators but active citizens – my profound apologies to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo – is one that is moot and deserves to be critically examined and even passionately debated on a national platform or forum. But, of course, equally important to note here or consider is the clearly indisputable fact that both former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and Sir Sam Jonah are veritable and vintage products and active participants of the so-called Rawlings’ Revolution that created the deafening and sickening Culture of Silence, to begin with.

Former President Kufuor, for example, was a key cabinet appointee and Secretary of Local Government and Rural Development in the Rawlings-led junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council. So, he is not precisely the sort of kosher or wholesome statesman and champion advocate of the democratic precepts, principles and ideals that he would have the rest of us, especially Ghanaian youths who are not old enough to have witnessed, first-hand, his crass and scandalous political opportunism think and believe.

In other words, strikingly like Sir Sam Jonah, the Afro-British Knight with “The Pedigree,” who the Asante-Atwima and Manhyia native would have the rest of us take more seriously than the former deserves, the Oguaa/Cape Coast native does not possess the sort of moral capital and/or gravity that these two “gentlemen” would have the rest of us members of the Global Ghanaian Community (GGC) believe that they have. You see, while, indeed, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government definitely need to be staunchly and critically held to account for their deeds and misdeeds, commissions and omissions, nevertheless, we ought not to lose clear sight of the obvious and practical fact that absolutely nothing under the Sun happens in a vacuum. Remember this Kufuor Maxim: “Corruption is perfectly natural, it comes from Adam and Eve, our first parents”?

You see, Dear Reader, whatever Nana Akufo-Addo has been able to achieve presently or not been able to achieve presently squarely depends on the deeds and misdeeds, failures and successes of his predecessors, including the definitive resolution of Dagbon/Yendi Chieftaincy Crisis, the restoration of the Mills-Mahama-collapsed National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), and the scandalous abortion of the December 19, 2019 proposed referendum to deepen Ghanaian democracy by having our local government executives – MMDCEs – directly elected by the people whom they are designated to serve.

In essence, what we clearly and unmistakably have here is a cheap and tawdry attempt to run a referendum on the stewardship and caliber of the man whom the Kufuor-Mpiani Cabal worked fiercely and assiduously and shamelessly to prevent from ever acceding to the Presidency of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana in our lifetime. But guess what, Dear Reader? The joke goes three ways; it is equally on all three protagonists of this column, namely, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and Sir Sam Jonah, the “Pedigreed” man whom many Ghanaians believe sold out the mineral resources of our beloved country for the title of “Knight of the British Empire,” not Companion of the Order of the Volta.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 28, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]