Kennedy Agyapong Needs to Look Himself Up in the Mirror

He has lived, off and on, right here in the United States of America for some 40 years. And yet, Mr. Kennedy “Akom-Prigozhin” Ohene Agyapong pretends as if he lacks the sort of socioeconomic, cultural and political exposure of the globally well-traveled person. He is fully aware of the fact of the unforeseen deleterious impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the global economy, including the putatively biggest economy on Planet Earth, namely, the United States of America. Yet, purely for purposes of political expediency and reckless opportunism, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central Constituency, in the Central Region, pretends as if the economic difficulties ravaging the country presently are all primarily due to the gross managerial incompetence of the presumptive 2024 Presidential Nominee of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), namely, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia (See “ ‘NPP Lost 2024 Elections in 2022’ Was a Direct Shot at Bawumia – Ken Agyapong Clarifies” Ghanaweb.com 9/19/23).

In a practical sense, about the only validity of Kennedy Agyapong’s rather strategically unwise and characteristically intemperate accusation against Vice-President Bawumia is that it applies more obviously to the Finance Minister, Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, than any other key operative of the Akufo-Addo Cabinet. Those of you who are regular readers of my columns are well aware of the fact that for quite a considerably while now, Sincerely Yours has been earnestly pleading with his Dear Good, Old Uncle Kwaku Willie to promptly shelve any familial sentiments or emotional biases that he may, naturally, harbor for his Cousin Ken and boldly face up to the stark reality of the fact that the Columbia- and Yale universities-schooled co-founder of the locally renowned investment establishment called Databank has royally and unspeakably failed in his very sensitive and cranially taxing portfolio as Ghana’s Finance and Economic-Planning Minister, and must therefore promptly give way to a far more civically responsible and sacrificially patriotic and professionally qualified candidate for the job.

The mere fact that, according to Cousin Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko, the Minister-without-Portfolio, Mr. Ofori-Atta has been the foremost underwriter of the long-drawn-out Akufo-Addo Presidential-Electioneering Campaign Machine ought not to unduly blind Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to the fact that Ken Ofori-Atta’s continuous stay office, well beyond the extent of his professional competence and managerial capacity or capability, is a clear and present danger to the socioeconomic and the psycho-political wellbeing of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people, and may very well have already put the entirety of the institutional establishment of the New Patriotic Party on the crest of an irreversibly catastrophic precipice that may very well see the party languish in opposition for an unimaginably long time to come.

Now, it goes without saying that as a relatively and unprecedentedly progressive neoliberal and free-market oriented ideological establishment, the New Patriotic Party may really “have the men” and “the women” as well, except for the fact that it ought to already have become crystal clear to the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice that Cousin Ken has already more than amply proven himself to be absolutely no better than the grossly managerially incompetent likes of such John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama appointees as Messrs. Seth Terkper; Kwabena Donkor, the Custom-Tailored Power Minister, who, by the way, was wisely let go by Okogufuo Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja, after having proven himself over a 12-month period, to be grossly and hopelessly unequal to the job, the only one of his kind to be promptly expelled from the Mahama Cabinet; Armah Kofi Buah; John Jinapor and the tax-dodging Mahama Ayariga, the epically failed Minister for the Environment, Science and Technology, to name only a handful.

What is more, even the Jack-o-Lantern-brained Cousin Otchere-Darko has publicly and proudly stated that he sees fundamentally and absolutely no difference between the much-maligned lackluster caliber of Mr. Terkper and Cousin Ofori-Atta, which this Minister-Sans-Portfolio has also farcically reckoned to be what makes Mr. Ofori-Atta as logically and retributively or equally unremovable as Mr. Terkper had been under the previous Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress. Trust me, Uncle Kwaku Willie, the prompt albeit rather much too late removal of Cousin Ken from the Finance Ministry, where he has done the practical equivalent of slash-and-burn wrecking of Ghana’s macroeconomy and microeconomy as well, to be certain, could significantly reduce the current political boiling-point temperature and climate in the country. Unless, of course, My Dear Good, Old Uncle Kwaku Willie is also hellbent on returning the proverbial Elephant to the Wassa Rain Forest in perpetuity.

You see, the sort of hermetic obduracy or adamancy being exhibited by the Abomosu Boys in the name of Okyeman has already done more than enough damage to the fortunes of the youths of Akyem-Abuakwa for generations to come. Even more significant, a lame-duck Nana Akufo-Addo, a man well-known to be rather inordinately given to ancestral hero worship and fetishism, may do himself and the rest of Okyeman, in particular but the New Patriotic Party, as a whole, very well to be studiously mindful of the dire implications of such morally inexcusable intransigence.

Ultimately, the Cedi remains one of the top-five strongest legal tenders or monetary currencies on the African Continent; and this is due much more to the genius and rarefied expertise of the likes of Vice-President Bawumia and the latter’s extant boss and mentor at the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Paul Acquah, and not the shameless and brazenly parasitic likes of Mr. Agyapong who only envisage his membership affiliation with the ruling New Patriotic Party almost exclusively in terms of what their ideological nemesis, namely Mr. Kevin Taylor, in the case of the Assin-Central Member of Parliament, aptly characterizes as a “Cash Cow.”

You see, to make his criticism of the Akufo-Addo Government and the entire leadership of the New Patriotic Party resonate with credibility, Mr. Agyapong needs to explain to the general Ghanaian public what kind of counsel or advice he offered to the likes of Messrs. Bawumia and Ofori-Atta and the rest of the membership of the Economic Management Team (EMT) of the twice-elected Akufo-Addo Administration, and stop behaving childishly as if all that matters most to the global Ghanaian citizenry is how much his $ 100 million (USD) bank account plummeted precipitously in value to $ 40 million (USD) within just a couple of months last year.

The fact of the matter is that even world-class billionaires like Elon Musk, of Tesler automobile and Space-X fame, and Jeff Bezos, of Amazon global renown, lost billions of dollars in capital investments and bank deposits, let alone a shameless political scam-artist like Kennedy “Akom-Prigozhin” Ohene Agyapong, the bulk of whose wealth has almost exclusively come from his voracious and unconscionable milking of the Ghanaian taxpayer via the criminal awarding of hyperinflated government contractual awards. Now, what moral value could mischief-making thieves and economic parasites like the “Akom-Prigozhin” be really worth?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
September 23, 2023
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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