Whomever Ofori-Atta Chooses as His Counsel in Removal Process is not Sam George’s Lookout

You begin to sense the patently pedestrian fact that what is really at stake, on the part of the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority, vis-à-vis the decision by the latter aisle to censure and get the Finance Minister removed from office, has very little to absolutely nothing to do with the seven allegedly tabled grievances. Rather, it has everything to do with raw and sheer envy, as was recently obnoxiously exhibited in a tweet by Mr. Samuel George Nartey, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the Ningo-Prampram Constituency, in the Greater-Accra Region.

Following the maiden sitting of the Parliamentary Fact-Finding Committee, that has been given seven days to investigate and decide whether or not Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta deserves to be censured and removed from office, the Ningo-Prampram NDC-MP was reported to have decried the fact that the Respondent, that is, Mr. Ofori-Atta, had decided to have his own cousin and putatively de facto Prime Minister of the Akufo-Addo government represent the Finance Minister before the aforesaid committee.

That Ofori-Atta cousin, of course, is predictably none other than Mr. Gabriel Asare Otchere-Darko; and the beef of the Ningo-Prampram NDC-MP is that having his own cousin represent Mr. Ofori-Atta before the Parliamentary Fact-Finding Committee is tantamount to a blatant display of “nepotism” or what in Ghana is commonly called “family and friends” governance (See “Censure Motion: Ofori-Atta Choosing Gabby as Counsel Politically Unintelligent, Blatant Show of Family [and] Friends – Sam George” Modernghana.com 11/15/22).

The reaction of Mr. Nartey is inexcusably obnoxious because the critic rather predictably, presumptuously and dictatorially presupposes to have the right to cavalierly decide who the embattled Finance Minister decides to have represent him before the Parliamentary Fact-Finding Committee, whose motion of censure, by the way, was almost wholly and exclusively initiated by the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority. Among the Akan, we have a maxim that runs as follows: “Once you push an old woman with the dastardly obvious intention of doing her great harm, you need not worry about which location on the ground upon which she falls.”

What is significant here to think and talk about is not the fact of whom Mr. Ofori-Atta chooses to have represent him before the Parliamentary Fact-Finding Committee. Rather, what the pathologically jaundiced likes of Sam George, as the Ningo-Prampram NDC-MP is popularly known, need to either worry or concern themselves with or about is the fact of whether, indeed, the members of the NDC Parliamentary Minority that moved the motion to censure Mr. Ofori-Atta and have the latter promptly removed from his Finance Minister’s portfolio, have the necessary compelling culpable or incriminating evidence to back up their motion.

The critic’s apparent lack of interest in the validity or substance of the grievances leveled against Mr. Ofori-Atta by the likes of Messrs. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Bernard Ahiafor, ought to readily inform any critically-thinking observer of Ghana’s Fourth Republican political landscape of the fact that the motion to censure Mr. Ofori-Atta may very well be much ado about absolutely nothing, in classical Shakespearean parlance, or simply full of sound and signifying zilch, as it were. Now wonder then that Sam George has since long gained notoriety as a hot-air blowing homophobe who may very well have his own closeted skeletons, the imminent exposure to public shame and embarrassment he may be apt to be jealously on guard about.

The preceding notwithstanding, it goes without saying that matters are significantly complicated by the fact that while, indeed, the overwhelming majority of the ruling New Patriotic Party’s Parliamentary Majority claims to be vehemently averse to the methodology by which the push for the removal of Mr. Ofori-Atta is being executed or waged, primitive battle fashion, nonetheless, the members of the NPP Parliamentary Majority also claims to be fervidly in favor of having the Finance Minister, who has been widely accused of exhibiting gross managerial incompetence by members of both major political parties and, indeed, the entire nation at large, removed from office.

The ideologically muddled apparent indecision by the Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu-led Parliamentary Majority Caucus is downright and inescapably problematic, because it also dispiritingly demonstrates an abject lack of a palpable sense of resolute leadership of the kind direly needed presently to get the country out of its seemingly intractable socioeconomic morass. In sum, the New Patriotic Party’s leadership needs to promptly rise up to the occasion, as it were, and frankly call the proverbial shovel a shovel, by having Mr. Ofori-Atta promptly removed from office or have themselves to eternally blame come Election 2024, when the metaphorical chickens are apt to come home to roost.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

November 17, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]