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Is General Mosquito a Rawlings Avatar? – Part 1

Feature Article Is General Mosquito a Rawlings Avatar? – Part 1
MAR 30, 2023 LISTEN

It has been very obvious for a remarkable span of time that the newly elected National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, has had something very sinister up his sleeves for quite a considerable while now. At least, I personally prefer to date the inception of his recently very successful “parliamentary coup d’état” to have been flagged or perhaps even inadvertently inspired by the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings on the day that the then General-Secretary of the party arrived very late to one of the legally proscribed commemorations of the December 31st Revolution, so-called, and Chairman Rawlings made the characteristically jovial remark that his former Deputy Defense Minister was a man of considerable wit and common sense, but rather much too wiry and unprepossessing or not attractive enough to qualify to be named as the running-mate of the then-Candidate John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama, otherwise he definitely qualified to be named to this second-bananas job.

Back then, I vividly remember remarking in a private conversation with one of my politics-talking buddies whose name I cannot presently recall that Chairman Rawlings may very well have planted the poisonous seed of a presidential ambition in the mind of the coconut-headed native of Seikwa, in the former Brong-Ahafo Region, presently a part of the Akufo-Addo-created Bono Region Proper. And then, it well appears that when no one was carefully looking, at least his main rivals and political opponents among the vanguard ranks of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Daasebre Nana Asiedu-Nketia, I, slipped stealthily behind the enemy lines, as it were, and quietly enrolled himself into the Senior-Staff College of the Ghana Armed Forces to study the hard-nosed art of coup-plotting and suavely undermining the otherwise salutary and robust political culture of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. And then, of course, the next thing that we all knew, as Americans are wont to say, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, perhaps caught flat-footed himself, was keynoting the graduating class of The Mosquito and quizzically sharing a friendly joke and a pleasantry or two with this superannuated Grandfather of a Military Trainee who, we were frankly told by the proverbial horse himself, never really went through the rigors of the traditional enlistment process or protocol. Now, let’s talk about favoritism, corruption and nepotism.

One would almost be tempted to attribute the recent rude awakening that The Mosquito gave the Haruna Iddrisu Gang of the NDC Parliamentary Leadership to the Chairman-General’s recent acquisition of the knowledge of a warlord in our constitutionally democratic political culture. But the true fact of the matter is that way long before The Mosquito privately and, perhaps, even secretly enrolled himself into the Senior-Staff College of the Ghana Armed Forces, the Chairman-General had already established himself as the de-facto National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress. He had already manipulated and outmaneuvered the established ground rules, bylaws and the standing rules and the regulations of the party well enough to easily and literally crown Dr. Ezanator or Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings as the Dynastic Member of Parliament for the Klottey-Korle Constituency of Accra-Central, by insisting rather brazenly and raucously that the party stalwart who held that seat at the time and had once been appointed Mayor of the Tema Industrial Township by the then-President Rawlings, was simply being “politely” asked to return the favor by promptly and “respectively” relinquishing his party-owned and ticketed seat for the Dublin, Irish Republic-trained pediatrician daughter of the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress.

Indeed, even as I write, I suspect that that unfortunate victim of The Mosquito’s coup – the victim was quite advanced in years at the time – may very well have transitioned to the other side of the Here-and-Now, that is, taken his grief and trauma to his ancestors of yore. I must also quickly point out that The Mosquito had not achieved all this completely and exclusively on his own. Instead, this sharp-shooting strategist, no pun intended here, by the way, had been staunchly backed by the leaden scarecrow heft of the Sogakope Mafia Generalissimo. I also have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Togbega Avaklasu, I, was retrospectively and retroactively borrowing a page, at least philosophically, from the Wise Old Man of Ekumfi-Narkwa, his late former lock-stepping right-hand man. Which, of course, can only mean that cannibalizing Nii Ashitey’s well-sweated parliamentary seat for Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings was decidedly tantamount to merely “Keeping a good and a great and a precious thing within the family.”

Now, these are some of the narcissistic and megalomaniacal and cynical robber-barons who would have the rest of the world believe that it is only Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the proverbial and legendary “Little Man from Kyebi,” who has been brazenly and impudently running a “friends and family government” in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. Come on, Joyce Bawa Mogtari, give us a break!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 23, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]

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