There Was an “Asante Project” before there Was an “Akyem Project” – Part 2

Critically thinking observers and spectators would like to know whether either late last year or early this year – I forget exactly which specific moment in time – when Hopeson Adorye stood in the middle of the Asante regional capital of Kumasi and smugly and cavalierly and very publicly asserted that an electorally triumphant Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia had assumed the historically daunting and decidedly impossible task and challenge of attempting to occupy the topmost ticket of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and lead the latter political establishment into the 2024 Presidential Election, as the Presidential Candidate of the Elephant Party, putatively and affectionately called, a behemoth feat that was historically unprecedented in the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired ideological establishment, was this proudly self-described Ethnic Ewe actually quoting a paragraph from the D M Ofori-Atta and Company authored “Agyapadeε” Document?

Back then, as many of us vividly recall, the latter-day Kyerematen propaganda tout and goon let on to the entire nation that there was absolutely no way that Ethnic Akans, most especially Ethnic Asantes, were apt to literally sit duck and allow a complete and total “Northern Outsider” – read “an Ethnic Nonentity” – to take over the topmost ticket and the politically most powerful position in the Akan-founded and almost wholly dominated New Patriotic Party, let alone fathom himself ever acceding to the Apex Office of the land or the Presidency on the ticket of the latter political party and ideological establishment. The obvious implication here, of course, was that the twice-elected Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia had a far greater chance of accessing the Fourth Floor of the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-constructed Akan Stool-shaped “Asante Project” that was Jubilee House – the magnificent edifice constructed with a generous combination of a grant and a soft-loan assistance from the Indian Government – from the Ethnic-Asante Prohibited and presently the John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Now, on the videoclip which was just sent to Truly Yours and upon which the first part of this column series, already published, as of this writing, is based, Mr. Adorye informs his audience and the two clinically and forensically gullible Ghanaian women broadcast journalists flanking the rough-hewn Alan Kyerematen tout in what appears to be a television studio that, somehow, the Akyem Mafia and Project Managers of the “Agyapadeε” Document have decided that in order for their most inglorious and immitigably despicable and fascist agenda of capturing and/or owning the collective wealth and the resources of the entire Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana to be resoundingly successful, somehow, they need to bypass the Asante Federation in order to strategically rope in a Northern-Descended Vice-President Bawumia for their intended purpose.

The overriding objective here, “The Publisher” of the “Agyapadeε” Document tells us, is really not to incorporate the Ethnic Mamprusi/Mamprugu native into the “Akyem Project,” as a partner and a coequal principal, but simply to create a façade and a strategic or tactical semblance of inclusion by way of what may be aptly characterized as a Ghanaian or, rather, an Akyem Version of Affirmative Action Policy, as generally and loosely understood hereabouts the United States of America. Now, we have a little problem here; and it obviously has to do with why a lame-duck President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would so adamantly and obdurately push for the selection of Dr. Matthew Yaw Opoku-Prempeh, a bona fide Manhyia or Asante and/or Kumasi Mafia of vintage stock and breed, to serve as the Running-Mate and, potentially, the most highly likely successor of the Oxbridge and Simon Fraser and Buckingham universities-educated widely presumed Next President of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Candidate Mahamudu Bawumia, the Walewale native from the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region, against the wise and strategically savvy counsel of unpaid and unsalaried volunteers and incurably patriotic bona fide Ghanaian-American citizens like this author.

It simply does not cohere with plain logic and common sense. But maybe “Publisher” Adorye needs to inform his audience about precisely what “Project” his current boss and paymaster, namely, Mr. Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, founder and owner of the so-called Butterfly Party – aka Movement for Change – was thinking about, when the “longest-playing” Trade and Industry Minister in the governments of both his cousin and former President Agyekum-Kufuor and the now lame-duck President Akufo-Addo, told party members and the nation that Alan Cash – as Mr. Kyerematen is also widely and popularly known – had heavily invested in the financial fortunes of the New Patriotic Party and therefore deserved, more than any other party stalwart or bulwark, to reap the full benefits of his investments by being literally and automatically ceded the 2024 Presidential Ticket of the New Patriotic Party devoid of contest?

Was the preceding gross exhibition of tantrum of the most pathologically infantile order also part of the much ballyhooed “Asante Project” or the “Akyem Project”? We must also emphatically put on record here that, presently, the Kyerematen-owned and operated Butterfly Party or Movement for Change has collaboratively merged with another splinter party owned and operated by Dr. Forster Abu-Sakara, a professional agronomist and a blood relative or cousin, it is not clear to this author, as of this writing, exactly what specific form or kind of consanguineal relationship Dr. Abu Sakara has with the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, with the sole and the overriding objective of effectively scuttling the seemingly inexorable march of Vice-President Bawumia towards Jubilee House, his “Apprenticeship Haunt” for the past seven-and-half years.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
July 30, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]