body-container-line-1
27.09.2021 Feature Article

The Buck Stops with President Akufo-Addo, Trust Me

The Buck Stops with President Akufo-Addo, Trust Me
27.09.2021 LISTEN

The seemingly Stygian and intractable rot fiercely militating against the resonant success of the Akufo-Addo Administration was well known long before this political principal acceded to the highest office of the land. So, the latest bitter complaint about the flagrant and criminal greed of one of the widely alleged key players of the present Administration scarcely comes as news to me (See “Greedy Gabby ‘Running, Ruining’ Akufo-Addo Government – ‘Exiled’ Relative Warns” Ghanaweb.com 8/8/21). I never really lived in Kyebi, the traditional Okyeman Royal Capital or had any remarkable chance to socialize with the leading members of the Ofori-Atta family and Clan, so I have not had to be the least bit concerned about having my hard-won reputation sullied or significantly damaged or dented by the recent chain of contretemps that has apparently become the hallmark and/or trademark of Messrs. Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko and Kenneth Kuntunkununku Ofori-Atta, not necessarily in the order in which these key players of the Akufo-Addo Administration are listed here,

But one thing that clearly seems to inextricably link all three players involved, that is, including the plaintiff himself, namely, Mr. Angel Nana Yaw Boakye Dankwa Ofori-Atta Owoahene Yiadom – and they invariably seem to have this inordinate penchant for a long chain of nominal or nomenclatural appellations – is this rather at once facile and quizzical idea that, somehow, all it takes to put a Presidential Candidate or Nominee into Jubilee House is cash. Raw cash or money, that is. I have already dealt with this aspect of such amateurish political frivolity, or superficial political thought or thinking, so I do not intend to rehash the same here again. Indeed, I tackled this grossly misread and crassly misconstrued aspect of the rise of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the wake of the seismic and apocalyptic passing of Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie – aka “Sir John” – and do not intend to reprise the same here again.

What I, however, briefly want to observe tangentially here or at least in passing is this old adage or axiom that seems to have so fast and thoroughly escaped the mnemonic banks of the foregoing “Kyebicrats,” which is simply the commonplace fact that “However grandiose or great the King of Kyebi may be deemed, in the final analysis, the King of Kyebi is still the bona fide son of the Asiakwahene, or the Paramount King of the Nifa Division of Akyem-Abuakwa.” You see, long before there existed a modern judicial system or establishment in Kyebi, there was already such a system in existence in Akyem-Asiakwa. I shall take out some time, Divine Providence affording me such grace, in due course, to further expatiate on the foregoing observations. In the meantime, suffice it for me to glancingly note that what is apt to irreparably ruin the reputation and stature of the Akufo-Addo Administration, and with the latter the entire Ofori-Atta Clan and its political allies and associates, is the sort of inexcusable greed that the Amsterdam-domiciled Mr. Ofori-Atta has obliquely alluded to, namely, the auspiciously aborted Agyapa Mineral Investment Mega-Heist and the irreverent and politically blasphemous solicitation of alms for the purely privately conceived construction of the National Cathedral on the august floor of Ghana’s Parliament.

Maybe if the Finance Minister humbly gave himself the chance of getting elected to serve in Ghana’s National Assembly, in much the same glorious and laudable manner that his own biological father, the politically and professionally astute and redoubtable Dr. Jones (Nana Kwasi) Ofori-Atta, late, had done in his time and his generation, he would have admirably learned to cultivate the appropriate and requisite parliamentary decorum. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Akufo-Addo partisans would not have much to pride themselves in or boast of shortly down the line or the pike, as it were, unless their familial principal or paterfamilias sobers up and put both feet firmly down to ensure that the kleptocratic “fufu-headed” kinsfolk with whom he may have either willfully or unwittingly surrounded himself and the Presidency are meticulously and individually instructed vis-à-vis where they properly belong in the scheme of things or at the proverbial dinner table.

You see, my own late father (May Divine Providence Rest His Spirit and His Soul), Prof. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Sr., of both the Asante-Juaben and the Kyebi royal families, was fond of saying that his epic and massive leadership foibles and all, “Osagyfo-Dr. Kwame Nkrumah” was the best thing that happened to Ghana on March 6, 1957. For my father, grandson of the Asiakwahene and Odehye of Asante-Barekese, “Osabarima” Kwaku Okoampa-Agyeman, at the time, the Danquah and Ofori-Atta Clan was thoroughly and incurably and pathologically composed of imperious elitists who had little to absolutely no remarkable compassion for those Ghanaian citizens they deemed not to belong in the realm of those who really mattered or were of respectable and substantive social standing. Nearly a century later, Ghanaians are witnessing this bizarre prediction eerily and relentlessly become an unsavory but, nevertheless, an inescapable reality.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

August 8, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]

body-container-line