National Security Must Be Unsparing with Suspects of Voter-Registration Violence

Ever since the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “STL” Dramani Mahama had the effrontery to remind Ghanaian citizens and voters about the already widely known fact that the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), was the most violent political party establishment in Ghana, when it comes to the primitive, crude and raw application of deadly force as a means of achieving its agenda and interests, we have been wondering about what concrete plans or strategies have already been put in place by both the lame-duck Akufo-Addo Administration and the corporate leadership of our various National Security Agencies to preempt any possible or highly likely outbreak of an NDC-instigated or planned orchestration of deadly violence in the runup to the December 7, 2024 watershed General Election, as occurred in the Techiman-South Constituency, in the Akufo-Addo-created Bono-East Region in the heat of the fiercely contested 2020 General Election.

It has been said by our elders and sages of yore that upcoming events are often presaged by the prevailing winds of the moment. This certainly appears to be the case signaled by the widespread reports of a rash of violent incidents that seem to have gripped or inflected the ongoing Limited Voter-Registration Exercise recently launched by the Jean Adukwei Mensa-chaired Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), in which dozens of individuals wielding guns and other forms of deadly weapons are reported to have clashed at various voter-registration centers all over the country (See “Voter registration: Ghana isn't safe; December polls might be 'each one for himself, God for us all' — Allotey Jacobs” Modernghana.com 5/16/24).

Both voters’ registration seasons and polling periods have almost invariably been tainted by politically motivated acts of violence, as Mr. Bernard Allotey Jacobs recently told the host of Peace-FM’s flagship morning current affairs program called “Kokrokoo,” Mr. Kwami Sefa Kayi. For those of our readers who may not be familiar with the name and/or the identity of the self-styled “Humble Cape Coast Fisherman,” Mr. Allotey Jacobs is the retired Central Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress who was summarily expelled from the latter political party because Mr. Allotey Jacobs had dared to frankly and objectively praise President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for having the guts and the rarefied sense of patriotism and good leadership responsibility to import some 300 world-class or state-of-the-art ambulances for use by the Ghana National Ambulance Service, and to partially replace the veritable lemons and engineless hulks criminally imported into the country by the Mahama-appointed former Health Minister, namely, Mr. Alexander Segbefia, with the signature of approval by Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, at the time one of two or three Deputy Ministers of Finance and Economic Planning.

Today, the newly minted “Dr.” Ato Forson is the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia-coronated National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Caucus’ Leader. The bizarre news here is that the recent Legon-Manufactured Dr. Ato Forson is an indicted criminal suspect who is on trial even as of this writing. That is precisely how morally unimpeachable the overwhelming majority of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress are. Which is also what makes it perfectly understandable that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress would be desperately and fiercely fighting the Jean Adukwei Mensa-chaired Independent Electoral Commission, in a weirdly and deviously strategic bid to impugning the reputation, image and the integrity of the globally certified most efficient and professionally flawless IEC Chairperson or Chief Returning Officer that Ghana has ever produced since the inception of the country’s Fourth Republican Democratic Dispensation in January 1993 or thereabouts.

On the latter theme, while we are still at it, must also be promptly highlighted the fact that for the first time in nearly two decades, Election Observers from Ghana’s foremost traditional partners, so-called, namely, the Members of the European Union (EU), especially the Western European Countries, and the United States of America, among several others, gave the general conduct of Ghana’s 2020 General Election, in particular Ghana’s 2020 Presidential Election, the cleanest bill of health and credibility that we have ever had since Independence, some 67 years ago. Now, the leadership of the Mahama-“Langalanga-ed” National Democratic Congress is well aware of the fact of having absolutely no enviable performance record to sell to the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters, thus their morally and politically benighted attempt to bully their way back to power by savagely resorting to the despicable use of violence in a bid to sidestepping the democratic rule of law and order, by “revolutionarily” shooting its way into Jubilee House.

The good news here is that it is highly unlikely that the present globally savvy generation of Ghanaian youths would sit duck, while a superannuated graduate of the Ghana Armed Forces’ Senior-Staff College like “Lt-Col.” Johnson “The Bui Dam Woyome” (Mosquito) Asiedu-Nketia, the thoroughgoing corrupt and autocratic Wannabe-Rawlings National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, literally took them for a ride. We know perfectly well the rough briar patches of virtual socioeconomic suicide of a destination that the late Chairman Rawlings-piloted Kangaroo Jet-Liner spray-painted with the legend of “Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice” landed the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens for some 20 years. Hell, No! We NoGo Sit Down Make Dem Cheat We Everyday. Hell, No! Daabi Da!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
May 17, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]