Candidate Opoku-Agyeman’s Cheap, Populist Talk Was Nothing Short of Embarrassing – Part 4

There are unmistakable elements of plagiarism in Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang’s Acceptance Speech, following her widely predictable selection, for the second time, to partner the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama into the watershed 2024 Presidential Election (See “[Full text] Acceptance speech by Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang as 2024 NDC Running Mate” Modernghana.com 4/24/24). Now, has it occurred to any of these self-righteous false Apostles of Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Jstice that their unspeakable level of corruption and State-Capture dealings, during the previous Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress, may very well have spilled into and set the tone for the widely perceived high spate of rank corruption that has almost effectively paralyzed the otherwise unprecedentedly visionary and progressive government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo? As the old maxim goes: “It always takes one rotten apple to spoil the rest.”

Of special interest and significance here is the concluding paragraph of the speech, where Prof. Opoku-Agyemang glaringly and shamelessly echoes the great American Civil-War Era Poet, Walter “Walt” Whitman, without the slightest acknowledgment of the fact that the long-retired Professor of English Language and Literature was doing a clearly unmistakable propagandistic variation on the poetry or the borrowed ideas of the Openly Gay Mr. Whitman titled “I Hear America Singing.” Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, New York, Mr. Whitman, from whose classic anthology of poems titled “Leaves of Grass,” the plagiarized portion of the 2024 Vice-Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress was lifted, is a poem which the recently retired Professor of English and Literature, as well as Print Journalism, and author of the present column taught his students for approximately 30 years or just a little over a quarter century. In respectable academic circles, such gross scholastic misconduct and intellectual dishonesty could easily have led to either the dismissal or the severe sanctioning of Prof. Opoku-Agyemang. In Ghana, however, it well appears that plagiarism has become more of the rule than the exception. What a crying shame!

In the foregoing instance, however, the 2020 Mahama Presidential Running-Mate unwittingly exposes the hopelessly irredeemable hypocrisy and downright and abject dishonesty of the entire charlatanic leadership of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). To give the critically thinking and the civically responsible reader an unfiltered appreciation of the scandalous magnitude of the extent of the political dishonesty committed by Candidate Opoku-Agyemang, I have decided to reproduce the entire concluding paragraph of Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s afore-referenced Running-Mate Acceptance Speech as follows:

“To every person who has lost or is losing hope, our youth as a collective and specifically, indispensable constituencies made up of young women and girls – the professionals and those who remain unemployed, our friends in the media, wherever you are and whatever you do, drivers, food processors, chop bar operators; factory workers, market women, hawkers and spare part dealers; kayaye, artisans, gardeners and galamseyers or coconut sellers and cleaners and babysitters and many, many more – I address you last because you are very special to me: come, I open my arms to welcome each one of you to partner with the NDC to envision and craft and roll out a future of limitless prospects; a future where your dreams and those of your children are attainable, your voices are constructive, where your lives matter.”

I could not help but literally fall of my couch to “hear” Candidate Opoku-Agyemang talk about “our friends in the media.” Now, who has so soon forgotten the savage mauling of Mr. Yahyah Kwamoah, the young broadcast journalist in the employ of the state-run Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), in 2015, by Mr. Stanislav Xoese Dogbe, the Communications Director of the Mahama Presidency, whom the now-Speaker Alban SK Bagbin described as the de-facto Head-of-State of the Mahama Presidency and Government? Who could Naana Opoku-Agyemang be trying to hoodwink or deceive here?

Then also, the 2020 and the 2024 Mahama Presidential Running-Mate also talks about “galamseyers or coconut sellers.” So, now, the critically thinking reader begins to fully understand and appreciate why the horrendous and the environmentally destructive activities of small-scale illegal miners were so lunatically encouraged by the former President, who once accused His Royal Majesty, The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, of having made Kyebi, the Ancient Royal Capital of Okyeman and Akyem-Abuakwa “The Galamsey Capital of Ghana.” Now, it turns out that, after all, “Galamsey” was simply another word for “Coconut Sellers” in the political lexicon of the key and the vanguard operatives of the National Democratic Congress.

Of course, Naana Opoku-Agyemang chose to conclude her Running-Mate’s Acceptance Speech by highlighting the wretched lives and the seedy socioeconomic existence of the country’s lumpen-poor and the ordinary and the destitute Ghanaian citizenry because the latter category of the victims of the Mills-Mahama Cash-and-Carry Slaughterhouse are the ones that have a diddly little to absolutely nothing to show for the 16 years of centuries of the prohibitively extortionate Fourth-Republican rule of the National Democratic Congress. You see, under the watch of the Cash-and-Carry “Deathcare Policy” propagators and Animal Farm-type propagandists of the National Democratic Congress, more of these woefully underprivileged and deliberately and criminally deprived and State-Capture extorted Ghanaian citizens have lost their lives more than their relatively more privileged fellow Ghanaian citizens and white-collar muggers and morally unconscionable AJANGUDAS.

So, it is not really clear who Naana Opoku-Agyemang is really so desperately eager to fool by pretending to open her arms and “welcome” these Mahama Doormats and to have the latter partner with the NDC “to envision and craft and roll out a future of limitless prospects” with the very people that in the runup to the 2016 Presidential Election, the infamous Rawlings-appointed “Shit-Bomber” – now, that is really what Candidate Opoku-Agyemang means when she talks about partnership with the media – a then-incumbent President Mahama properly put in their places by publicly and globally letting it be known that the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, had absolutely no classmates in the country, except for our two presently deceased former Presidents and our lone living former President, to wit, Mr. John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor. Now, let’s talk about “unbridled arrogance,” Nana Jane Opoku-Agyemang!

I mean, what “limitless prospects” could the vanguard operatives of the same populist and faux-socialist political-party establishment that has perennially and invariably demonstrated that it is not the least bit capable of creating any viable socioeconomic prospects for the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian citizenry, when it comes to critically examining the relative track record of the country’s two major political parties, namely, the ruling New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress, be talking about here?

You see, one does not really need a doctorate in English Language and Literature, much less Rocket Science or Nuclear Engineering, to figure out the stark and the readily acceptable fact that a party that caused the complete collapse of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which, to begin with, the leaders of the National Democratic Congress contemptuously told the masses of the Ghanaian citizenry was the veritable pipedream of a delirious and a megalomaniacal politician, only to have a newly elected President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo literally pump a humongous $2 billion (USD) into resuscitating for the benefit of the entire country, including the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, is the kind of political party that poor and ordinary Ghanaian citizens can wisely entrust with the management of their affairs.

As well, a party whose leadership disdainfully wrote off the socioeconomically and critically progressive establishment of a Fee-free Senior High School System, as one that seriously threatened the quality of the elitist status quo, which primarily benefited only the children of the filthy rich and politically powerful, as a party that is capable of creating “a future of limitless prospects” for each and every Ghanaian citizen. If Candidate Opoku-Agyemang has not recently undergone surgical lobotomy, then it is not clear to this author what the First Female Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast may clinically be suffering from.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]