Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s Inaugural Was a Shameless Copycatting of Mahamudu Bawumia

He very well may have run out of relevant and significant things to say about the relatively more formidable Mahamudu Bawumia Presidential-Election Campaign. That is why Kevin Baidoo Taylor – I hope I have his middle name spelt out correctly – decided to take gratuitous shots at the organizational structure and the program lineup of the Matthew Opoku-Prempeh Running-Mate’s inaugural ceremony that recently took place at Jubilee Park, in the Asante regional capital of Kumasi (See “ ‘Not Even a Program Lineup – Kevin Taylor Slams ‘Disorganized’ NPP Rally to Unveil Napo” Modernghana.com 7/9/24).

The truth of the matter is that whatever was really worth letting on to party faithful and Ghanaian citizens and voters across party and ideological lines was already systematically and meticulously unfurled by the man who is widely presumed within the global Ghanaian community to be poised to forming the next democratically elected government in the country, come January 7, 2025, to wit, the now-Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, as far back as February or March of this year, in the state-of-the-art auditorium of the University of Professional Studies in Accra (UPSA).

Ironically, it was in the same UPSA auditorium that the decisively defeated 2020 Vice-Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the 2024 Running-Mate of the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the latter party or political establishment chose to launch her already DOA (Dead-On-Arrival) 2024 Vice-Presidential Candidacy or Candidature, as most home-based Ghanaian citizens prefer to term it, a couple or so months later. Were he really the well-meaning National Democratic Congress’ strategist that he would have his audiences and the rest of us believe that he is, Mr. Taylor would have promptly called attention to the fact that even as of this writing and press preparation by Yours Truly, Candidate-General John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama has yet to roll out any systematic and coherent and/or comprehensive manifesto or national-development agenda to Ghanaian citizens and registered, eligible and potential voters.

Even more constructively, the ardent and the inveterate Akufo-Addo critic would also have soberly highlighted the fact that doing the very same thing for the second time around had not prevented an apparently pathologically daft and artless Candidate Opoku-Agyemang from making a national-development manifesto presentation that was nauseatingly fraught with shamelessly plagiarized literary tropes and allusions from the great and immortalized American folk poet and multiethnic, multicultural and multiracial Civil War veteran and patriot, namely, Mr. Walter “Walt” Whitman and the ageless and the ubiquitous Bard-of-Avon, to wit, Mr. William Shakespeare. A relatively better organized Naana Opoku-Agyemang lineup did absolutely nothing to significantly detract from or meliorate the fact that the first Ghanaian woman to have been named Vice-Chancellor of any major public university or tertiary academy in the country is also, unarguably, the worst Education Minister to ever have been named or appointed in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, perhaps even in the entire postcolonial period.

It does absolutely nothing to rectify the fact that under both the ministerial leadership of Candidate Opoku-Agyemang and the inglorious Presidency of Mr. Mahama, Ghana recorded the worst performance in the quality of our public education system and of any robust constitutional democracy on both the African Continent and the rest of the global community. Age-old incentives to Teacher Trainees were also summarily withdrawn or abrogated, even while Candidate Opoku-Agyemang had her children and relatives educated on scholarship grants at some of the most expensive schools and colleges abroad. You see, in Candidates Mahama and Opoku-Agyemang, we are talking about two pathologically self-serving politicians who are completely out of touch with the grim and practical reality on the ground in Ghana vis-à-vis the virtually insurmountable socioeconomic difficulties facing the proverbial average Ghanaian on a daily basis.

This is what the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and voters would rather have the sharpshooting but almost invariably misfiring and blank-shooting likes of the Kevin Taylors and the Sammy Gyamfis talk about, and not such decidedly superficial things and matters as who had been officially or unofficially listed on the inaugural program of the “outdooring” of Candidate Opoku-Prempeh to speak at Kumasi’s Jubilee Park recently.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
July 9, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]