Blame Parliamentary Affairs Minister for Bagbin Coup D’état

We are having this national-crisis situation in which Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament is attempting to hold the Government of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to ransom because the entire leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been refusing to lead for quite a considerable while now. And until Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo promptly steps up to the plate, in American baseball parlance, the NPP has to be prematurely preparing its handover notes to the Alfred Agbesi Woyome-underwritten National Democratic Congress (NDC). Those of you regular readers of my column are already fully aware of the fact that I have been calling for the removal and/or demotion of the Parliamentary Majority Leader, ever since Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu traveled to the Nadowli-Kaleo Constitution, in the Upper-West Region, in the leadup to the 2016 General Election, to rally unwholesome cross-partisan support for the reelection of Mr. Alban SK Bagbin, the now-Speaker of Parliament, who was then having an extremely difficult time convincing his long-held captive constituents that he had not exhausted himself of any fruitful ideas and/or plans that he had for moving their destiny up the next rung on the ladder of their socioeconomic development.

Mr. Mensah-Bonsu, as I vividly recall, tugged along with him Mr. Dominic Nitiwul, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Bimbilla Constituency, in the Northern Region, who presently doubles as the Minister of Defense. At the time of his self-serving crossover acrobatics, the Kumasi-Suame NPP Member of Parliament smugly insisted that Mr. Bagbin had an invaluable wealth and depth of experience that was far more important than having a parliamentary candidate from the ticket of Mr. Mensah-Bonsu’s own party challenge Mr. Bagbin for the Nadowli-Kaleo parliamentary seat. Now, the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost; we are reaping the self-serving and politically opportunistic fruits cultivated by Messrs. Mensah-Bonsu and Nitiwul some five-plus years on.

Back in 2016, that is, five years down the proverbial pike might have seemed to these Senior Fellows of the Machiavellian Institute like an Eternity. But we all presently know that it is not and never was. In all things political, we can be as polite to one another like the immortalized Busumuru Kofi Annan across the political divide and the parliamentary aisle. But it is the height of criminal folly for any New Patriotic Party operative to the least bit suppose that s/he shares the same flight feathers with the hawks and eagles of the Rawlings-Tsikata-minted and certified self-righteous assassins of the National Democratic Congress, formerly known as the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, the bloodiest and the most extortionate of its kind in Ghana’s postcolonial history, as was proudly touted by former President John “Akonfem-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama during an electioneering campaign stumps in the leadup to the 2020 General Election.

Now, a very shrewd and cold-calculating Speaker Bagbin has decided to show his “friend” Mr. Mensah-Bonsu the true color of blood, P/NDC style; and, predictably, these clinically naïve leaders of the New Patriotic Party are having the most traumatic moment of their lives (See “Revealed: The Three Concessions Bagbin ‘Stopped’ Ofori-Atta from Presenting” Ghanaweb.com 11/28/21). Mr. Mensah-Bonsu has had much too many opportunities to shine like the brightest star in Ghana’s political firmaments, but he has scandalously and flatly refused to shine because he simply does not have – Did I hear somebody say “Has”? – what it takes to shine. The man is a congenital klutz. Period. But, of course, it is not all his fault. Rather, it is the massive fault and strategic failure of the entire leadership of the New Patriotic Party.

You see, the NPP’s Parliamentary Leaders had the prime opportunity to replace a thoroughly worn out, fast-aging and lethargic Speaker Aaron Michael Oquaye with Mr. Joseph Osei-Owusu, popularly known as “Joe Wise, but a deliberately nihilistically cunning Mr. Mensah-Bonsu chose the primrose path of perdition for his party rather than do the right thing, in Leean filmic parlance. And, by the way, for those of our readers who may not know who “Joe Wise” or Mr. Osei-’Wusu is, he is the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Asante-Bekwai. He has been playing “Speakership Spare-Tire” for quite a considerable while now. I have not Googled it just yet, but I suspect that today Joe Wise is the First-Deputy Speaker of Parliament. Now, why shoot for second bananas, when the real McCoy, that is, the real bananas, are yours to lose?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

November 28, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]