We, The Pirates, Must Leave NPP Immediately!

Anybody who says that Ghana’s most progressive Fourth Republican political establishment, namely, the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), is bereft of its own fair share of major existential problems must have been sleeping soundly through most of the last three decades. These problems can be neatly summed up as one that has been inevitable from the very beginning of the foundations of the postcolonial Modern Ghanaian Nation-State. It is decidedly one that inescapably stems from the leadership of one particular Akan subethnic polity that claims to be uniquely endowed with a Manifest Destiny that entitles it to permanently dominate and lord it over the rest of the Mega-Akan Multi-Nation, on largely the same gratuitous grounds that the globally infamous German Chancellor Adolf Hitler predicated the imperative necessity for the Germanic or Teutonic people to summarily and effectively dominate the rest of the European peoples and the rest of global humanity.

The deleterious consequences of that morally and geopolitically benighted process of cannibalistic subjugation does not seem to have been learned by those who cavalierly suppose the political and ideological establishment of the New Patriotic Party to be or constitute their inalienable patrimony, and thus a political institutional establishment that is well beyond the salutary redemption of the democratic and equitable sharing of power and the spoils of principled democratic political engagement on the pure and best practices basis of merit or a measurable combination of talent and competence. It is for this reason that I solemnly advise the members of that most visionary, progressive and formidable, albeit deeply flawed, faction of the presently ruling New Patriotic Party, led by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, recently venomously characterized by fanatical John Agyekum-Kufuor surrogates like Prof. Acheampong Yaw Amoateng as “pirates” and “alien hijackers” to seriously consider leaving the party en masse and immediately well ahead of the 2024 watershed General Election. For truth be told: The New Patriotic Party is back to Bataan, that is, back to the summer of 2008 all over again. It is a decidedly no-win situation.

This writer, personally, has absolutely no need or reason to leave or promptly and summarily vacate his membership of the New Patriotic Party because he only spent some 7 months as a registered, card-carrying member of the NPP in 2007, or thereabouts, before being summarily afforded the boot by Messrs. Kofi Boateng and Agyenim-Boateng, then a Deputy Attorney-General in the US State of Kentucky, and the Asante-Kotoko Faction of the United States of America’s Chapter of the New Patriotic Party, more popularly known as NPP-USA. The latter group of “bouncers” included Nana Agyei-Yeboah, who had then recently replaced Mr. Boateng as Chairman of NPP-USA, although the former would personally put through a private phone call to apologetically explain to yours truly that as a mass communications specialist himself, and a graduate of the country’s oldest flagship academy, namely, the University of Ghana, Legon, he absolutely was on the same ideological page as yours truly.

Back then, as I vividly recall, the pretext given for giving yours truly the boot by the Kumasi Mafia, as it were, was that this writer, a bona fide Juaben Royal Scion, at least up until The War of 1870, or thereabouts, was that yours truly was obstructing the progressive activities of the membership of the NPP-USA Media Committee and staunch and dedicated adherents of the Elephant Party, so-called. Well, yours truly took his summary and resonant jack-booting from the party in stride and has since almost purely and exclusively contented himself with staunchly backing the Akufo-Addo/Adu-Boahen/Bawumia Faction of the New Patriotic Party, not necessarily in the order in which the foregoing names are listed, and the greater good of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. And, but for the ignoble hijacking of the Akufo-Addo Faction of the New Patriotic Party, formerly the Adu-Boahen/Akufo-Addo Faction of the New Patriotic Party, by the Godforsaken Tweedledee, which I have been incessantly warning Nana Akufo-Addo about, there can be absolutely no gainsaying that absolutely no Fourth-Republican leader during the course of the last 30 years has outperformed President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the man who holds the singular distinguished and indelible record of drafting the historically and politically unprecedented Repeal of the Criminal Libel Law, equally auspiciously implemented under the relatively progressive two-term tenure of President John Agyekum-Kufuor.

Now, I cannot personally resign my membership of the New Patriotic Party because I have effectively and involuntarily ceased being a member since 2007, that is, the same year that I officially registered as a member of the USA Chapter of the party, right here in The Bronx, New York City, at Cocoa House. But it absolutely goes without saying that I would be more than willing to help Alhaji-Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia form a Ghana People’s Party (GPP) or any other political party that the Vice-President decides to form or found in the runup to the 2024 General Election. Needless to say, time may be fast running out and I sincerely do not see any other constructive way out of the Stygian and politically primitive mess already created by Kufuor-Mpiani-Kyerematen surrogates like Prof. Acheampong Yaw Amoateng (See “Spreading Yourself Too Thin Will Spell Your Doom: An Open Letter to Chairman Stephen Ntim” Modernghana.com 7/30/22).

I had hoped to vigorously campaign for Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, the widely presumed 2024 New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate, and then permanently cap up my pen and slam-shut my laptop, except for an occasional writeup here and there, now and again. But sometimes Fate and the deities prefer to have it some other way, I guess.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 31, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]