Does Mr. Kufuor Really Understand “Globalization” and “Democracy”?

I generally love and respect the man, at least on the surface of things or in theory. But under absolutely no circumstances would I allow former President John Agyekum-Kufuor to get away with the sort of snide and mischievous remarks that he once a while makes against his inveterate rivals and political opponents, least of all those innuendoes and aspersions that from time to time he volleys in the direction of the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the man against whom he worked studious, religiously and systematically to prevent from ever occupying or succeeding to the Presidency. Sometimes, one even gets the very sad impression that but for the sake of sheer diplomatic pretense, Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor would not have Nana Akufo-Addo within a 20-mile radial proximity of the Kufuor residence.

This is rather ironic and sad because the “Gentle Giant,” as he used to be popularly and even affectionately known while he was substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, and the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo belong to the very same political party and ideological tradition, although one also gets the sharply drawn picture of former President Kufuor as a major political player who feels far more comfortable associating himself with the immortalized Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia than Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics. Which, for me, is perfectly and all well and good. After all, isn’t it an inescapable fact of life that we all cannot like the same person and/or the same set of people equally intensely all at the same time?

Besides, it makes perfect sense that the former President would not like Dr. Danquah in exactly the same way and manner that he publicly claims to fondly remember memorable moments that he intimately shared with the relatively much younger Oxbridge-educated Prime Minister Busia. Which is also why it would not be totally much of a surprise if it should turn out that a young Mr. Kufuor got his inspiration to attend Oxford University from the remarkable exploits of the future Prime Minister Busia, although he is just as likely to have been inspired by the late Dr. Alexander AY Kyerematen, the father of the present Trade and Industry Minister, whom Mr. Kufuor has publicly claimed in his very badly edited biography authored by Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Duah and titled “J A Kufuor: Between Faith and History,” to have been mentored or tutored him politically.

And, by the way, the late Dr. Kyerematen, whose father was Nana Kyerematen, of Asante-Akyem Bompata, the same culturally significant town in which yours truly was baptized by his Presbyterian Church of Ghana maternal grandfather, the late Rev. TH (Yawbe) Sintim(-Aboagye), is also the founder of the former Ashanti (Asante) Cultural Center, subsequently renamed the Ghana National Cultural Center (GNCC) and, presently, by the dint of the “revolutionary” envy of the key operatives of the late Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), the immediate ideological and institutional antecedent of the present-day National Democratic Congress (NDC), renamed as just one of the dozen, or so, nondescript Centers for National Culture (CNC) dotted across the country.

Anyway, recently, I chanced across a brief news item, as the Nigerians are wont to say, captioned “Globalization Is Not[sic] Realm for Dictators – Kufuor” (Modernghana.com 4/29/21), in which the former two-term President of Fourth-Republican Ghana was reported to be saying or to have said that in the fast-shrinking era of Marshall MacLuhan’s “Global Village” or Globalization, there was me spontaneously burst out laughing and could barely contain my disdain and contempt for this Smart Alec who, by the way, had also been quoted elsewhere by the media to have said that we needed practically more effective checks-and-balances among our three branches of democratic governance, else some Smart Alec was apt to megalomaniacally manipulate the levers of power at the expense of the democracy-loving overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people.

I suppose the former President was pretty much referring to himself, since absolutely nothing has changed about the constitutional appropriation of Executive Powers ever since Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor reluctantly left office in January 2009. Back then, as I vividly recall, he had just conferred with and had a sumptuous dinner as the special guest of a then lame-duck President Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military junta strongman and elected President of Nigeria and been taught a very ugly song and tune about how Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution needed to be promptly reviewed and amended in order to extend the present term of four years to either five or six years, for his own unique privilege, of course. It is a gaping shame that sometimes we all too easily forget that but for his deathly fear of what the recently deceased former President Jeremiah John Rawlings would have done to him, Mr. Kufuor may very well have played some Museveni or some Sossou Nguesso numbers on us.

But, of course, the Retired President is also rather naïve, perhaps even much too senile, not to realize the stark and naked fact that the era during which “the western world [freely and wantonly] manipulated and tapped into Africa’s resources” has actually become much easier, even as the overwhelming majority of African countries continue to woefully lag, technologically, behind the rest of the world. And, by the way, it may no longer be the western world that may be presently exploiting Africans with reckless abandon. These days, it may very well be the eastern-descended Tutors and Professors of Galamsey. You darn well know who I am talking about, Dear Reader, don’t you?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

May 3, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]