Addai-Nimo Must Stop Maligning the President

I have cautioned both Mr. Francis Addai-Nimo and Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah to stop lying about them having been deliberately sidelined by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in the divvying up of political appointments which, by the way, is not their inalienable entitlement (See “My Loyalty Towards NPP Remained Intact Despite Being Sidelined by Akufo-Addo – Addai-Nimo” Modernghana.com 2/1/23). You see, I am slightly older than Mr. Addai-Nimo and learned to walk, speak, read and write before he did. I also happen to have been born in his hometown of Asante-Mampong, one of the several ancestral royal “villages” of my maternal or uterine grandfather, the Rev. T. H. (Yawbe) Sintim(-Aboagye) – 1896-1982), of Akyem-Asiakwa, Begoro and Asante-Juaben.

When my grandfather was posted as a Presbyterian Church of Ghana-trained teacher and a graduate of the then Experimental College of Ramseyer Center, Okwawu-Abetifi, between 1910 and 1915, or thereabouts, to Mampong in the early 1930s, he had already served in several other places, such as Akyem-Apedwa and Asamankese, the Presbyterian or Basel School in the then very small town of Asante-Mampong went up to only the third grade or Primary 3 or Class 3. It was Teacher, later Master, Sintim who extended the school to Standard 7 or the tenth grade. The first teacher who had been posted there had abruptly abandoned his post for undisclosed reasons. If Mr. Addai-Nimo’s late father, the policeman, had been born in 1932 or 33 at all, he was very likely only a toddler in diapers. Papa Sintim was the mentor and teacher of the future luminary likes of the late Prof. J. H. Kwabena Nketia; Ex-District Commissioner J. C. Akosa; Mr. Agyekum, of Pioneer Tobacco Company, Kumasi, renown and brother of the future Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), Mr. Kwakye, the last person to see my grandfather alive at the 37^th Military Hospital, Accra, on November 26, 1982.

My own second paternal grandmother or Honorary Grandmother – she never reproduced any children of her own, but she helped to raise dozens of the children and grandchildren of her relatives and neighbors as a traditional nurse-midwife – was Maame Afia Donkor, who lived not very far from the Asante-Mampong Presbyterian Church of Ghana, at Serwaa Amaniampong, to be exact, not very far from the Police Station and across the Kumasi-Tamale Highway from the Mampong Middle-Technical School, where my late father, the future Prof. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Sr., of Kyebi, Asiakwa, Adansi-Fomena, Amuana-Praso and Asante-Juaben, among several other historic towns and villages, also taught woodwork and the performing arts, according to a reliable collegial source, between 1958 and 1964, when he left to attend the erstwhile School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana, Legon. Today, the Legon School of Music and Drama has been renamed the School for the Performing Arts.

You see, Dear Reader, I am recalling all this from when I was only about four years old and just a little older, from hearsay, for the most part, so some of the details may be faint and rusty, at best. At any rate, I was lucky and privileged to have met my Honorary Grandmother, Maame Afia Donkor, a little over 40 years ago, she must have been in her mid to late 80s then, shortly before I departed Ghana to join my parents in the United States of America, where I have been domiciled ever since. Back then, I thanked “Maafia,” as she was also affectionately called, for having so expertly nursed and shaped up my dainty coconut-head. In short, what I am trying to convey here is the fact that I probably understand and appreciate Asante-Mampong culture and ethos or morality much better than Mr. Addai-Nimo who, as I vividly recall, was professionally trained in Civil Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi: “We Mamponians,” as the famous DC Kwame Kwakye of Akyem-Kotoku and a stalwart of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) fame and infamy is routinely quoted as having once declared on a momentous occasion, “We are brave warriors who are not prone to lying our way to the Presidency like craven cowards.”

If, indeed, the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Asante-Mampong has any doubts, he may do himself and the rest of his captive political backers, lackeys and sympathizers great good by consulting with Odeefuo Osei-Bonsu and, also, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, for verification and confirmation. You see, Dear Reader, I have added the name of Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah, the former Chairperson of History at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, to the contents of this column because the very first time around, it was both men who had dished the sort of inexcusable mendacity that Mr. Addai-Nimo has decided to, once again, dish to a largely unsuspecting general Ghanaian public, that is, the sort of heretical mendacity that the latter desperately cynical and morbidly self-infatuated loser has, somehow, come to the conclusion that its tired repetition is apt to congeal into an unvarnished truth.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader: There are a lot of other faults or character foibles upon which the former John Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Deputy Minister – if memory serves yours truly accurately – could point to as a credible pretext or basis for both maligning President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and venting the critic’s spleen or even pet aversion for the latter. But you can bet your metaphorical or proverbial “Bottom-Dollar” that deliberately and strategically sidelining both Messrs. Amoako-Baah and Addai-Nimo is absolutely and definitely not one of them. I have written fairly extensively about this cock-and-bull poppycock already and so do not intend to rehash the same herein again. Suffice it, however, to observe glancingly or in passing that such claim has absolutely no truth or merit to it other than sheer political desperation, viciously and cheaply aimed at garnering the undeserved sympathy of unsuspecting party faithful, as it were. One really does not know what to make of the ad-nauseam reiteration of such whole cloth’s mendacity and metallic or solid bunk.

Of course, we all know the old Machiavellian rhetorical mantra that when any lie is repeated every so often, it eventually assumes the status of a Gospel Truth in the ears and minds and, even the hearts, of the simple-minded and the academically and professionally untutored. The truth and the unvarnished fact of the matter is that both Messrs. Addai-Nimo and Amoako-Baah roundly and very publicly rejected genuine and sincere overtures made by a newly elected or installed Akufo-Addo Presidency that were clearly aimed at offering a couple of executive albeit non-cabinet or non-ministerial appointments to both Messrs. Amoako-Baah and Addai-Nimo. In retrospect, it is very clear that the very public and flat or round rejection of their appointments by both Messrs. Amoako-Baah and Addai-Nimo may very well have strategically been meant to ensure the swift and catastrophic failure of the very first Akufo-Addo Administration because, in their micro-nationalistic playbook, the wrong person had been elected President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

Trust me, I know to which faction of the New Patriotic Party these two brazenly stentorian so-called party stalwarts belong, simply gauging by their very wily and downright mischievous pronouncements and innuendoes over the span of the past half-dozen years. Dr. Amoako-Baah may be the more sophisticated of these Two Musketeers, as it were. Lately, though, the Tennessee-trained and Jim Crow-educated historian has found a relatively more venomous aperture for venting his spleen. And so far, he has been quite focused and unrelenting in his insufferable insolence. But, of course, there are absolutely no surprises here, stereotypically speaking and knowing precisely which part of town and the country both of these self-befuddled malcontents and desperadoes are coming from.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 2, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]