NDC Was Likely Smack Behind Attempt to Strangle Matilda Amissah-Arthur

It must have made the banner news headlines a week or so ago, but I was then too busy and engrossed with the sacred missionary duty and business of ensuring that the unspeakably incompetent and nauseatingly recycled and politically spent and jaded Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John “I Have No Classmates In Ghana” Dramani Mahama, would never be returned to the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-constructed Akan stool-shaped, Indian government-underwritten Jubilee House. We are here, of course, referring to the recently widely reported news of the near-fatal strangulation of Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, widow of the late former Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, by an armed burglar who broke into her house, presumably in thick darkness and made away with a little in excess of $2,000 (USD) – that is, a little over Two-Thousand American Dollars (See “'My boss says I should shoot you but I'll rather strangle you to die slowly' — Amissah-Arrhur recounts robbery incident” Modernghana.com 6/10/24).

On the latter count, we are told that the incident being herein discussed occurred on Tuesday, December 5, 2023, which would be approximately five years after the Burma Camp military gym heart attack event that abruptly and tragically and, some even claim, inopportunely took the life of the former Governor of the Bank of Ghana who had been tokenized by the kingmakers and the queenmakers of the National Democratic Congress to pinch-hit for the equally seismic and highly suspicious passing of President John Evans Atta-Mills, the first Sitting-President of Ghana’s Fourth Republic to have “mysteriously” expired in office and been euphorically and heartily and publicly celebrated by his immediate successor as a “Kabonga Goofball” who made the inscrutable divine masterstroke blunder of naming him as his Presidential Running-Mate, against the better judgment and, in retrospect, the prophetic misgivings of the Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress and his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.

President Mills’ own Communications Director at the time, Mr. Samuel Koku Sitsofe Anyidoho, has written and spoken more than enough to leave anybody wondering about the near-certain early morning brutal assassination of the former Dynastic Heir and Right-Hand Man of the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, Ghana’s longest-ruling military dictator cum democratically elected two-term President. But that the apparently violent death of the former University of Ghana’s Tax-Law Professor would be euphorically celebrated by his own handpicked immediate successor, to wit, the then-Vice-President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, as an opportune gift generously proffered the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, by an inscrutable Divine Providence who had envisaged it to be perfect timing to replace the Fante Ekumfi-Narkwa native, so as to usher Ghanaians into the historic emergence of the first postcolonial-born Ghanaian leader, must give each and every one of us a morally sobering and chastening pause and cause for reflection, whatever the latter purely intuitive observation means.

In the main, it is the politically infamous speechwriter of the Mahama Jubilee House upon whom the searing focus of the “Whodunit” searchlight ought to be squarely and unsparingly directed. On the latter count, some pundits and avid observers of Fourth Republican Ghanaian Political Culture have fingered the extant reporter-mauling Communications Director of the Mahama Presidency, namely, Mr. Stanislav Xoese Dogbe, the architect of the near-fatal mauling of Mr. Yahyah Kwamoah, the broadcast journalist with the state-owned and operated Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). Enough has already been written and published about this most savage and barbaric incident to warrant any further rehashing of the same. Suffice it, however, to remark at least in passing that the morally despicable and the nationally opprobrious celebration of the sudden death of President Mills by then-Vice-President Mahama offers Ghanaians a striking example of behavioral traits that may be aptly deemed to be execrably and heinously “Un-Ghanaian” in toto.

Equally despicable is what clearly appears to have been an assassination attempt a la J B Danquah-Adu style of Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, especially regarding that portion of her narrative where the armed bandit who had illegally broken into her house and pointed a gun at her head, told Ghana’s former Second Lady that although “My boss says I should shoot you, I won’t shoot you. Rather, I will strangle you so that you die a slow death; so that the next time that [you come back into the world] you would learn to keep enough money on you at all times.” Even more telling of the evidential trademark of the cutthroat operatives of the National Democratic Congress, Mrs. Amissah-Arthur recalls her would-be contracted assassin saying to her: “Look, you have wasted my time, so I have to kill you. But I have to first call my boss.”

Now, the next most logical question to ask here is the following: Precisely who could the “Boss” of this armed robber and hired goon be? And the most obvious answer is that ever since Mrs. Amissah-Arthur boldly and fearlessly told Ghanaians and the rest of the world, during the funeral service for her late husband in the late summer of 2018, that former Vice-President Papa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur had been literally treated like rotten garbage by then-President Mahama and his staff of murderous kleptocrats at Jubilee House, the Gonja Mafia and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Posse have never forgiven her. And, of course, it makes equally perfect sense to suppose that neither has Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur forgiven the people whose immitigable hostility may very well have prematurely driven the former Adjunct Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Ghana, Legon, to his early grave.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
June 12, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]