There Was an “Asante Project” before there Was an “Akyem Project” – Part 5

It is quite interesting and significant to note that almost immediately upon assuming the democratic reins of governance in January 2009, the newly elected President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and Vice-President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama cynically and emphatically announced that they had absolutely no interest nor the intention of “completing any ‘Asante Projects’ left behind by the recently outgone or statutorily defunct John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Now, what all critically thinking bona fide Ghanaian citizens and members of the electorate need to interrogate is precisely why Messrs. Atta-Mills and Mahama would so invidiously and characteristically and tribalistically categorize all projects left uncompleted by the departed Agyekum-Kufuor government, especially those located in the Asante Region, the native region of the twice-elected former Deputy Foreign Minister in the democratically elected government of the late Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, as “Asante Projects.”

Doing so would enable each and every Ghanaian citizen to fully appreciate the civically and politically divisive philosophy and agenda of the erstwhile Mills-Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). By so doing, we will also be able to fully appreciate the fact of why the twice-defeated, one-term former President Mahama appears to be so shamelessly fixated on selecting Fante-descended party members as his running-mates, when there is glaring evidence that the top party ticket holders of the National Democratic Congress have absolutely no fondness for people or politicians of Fante ethnicity or descent as their running-mates.

We all witnessed these glaring cases of rank and wanton abuse of the late Vice-President Ekow Nkensen-Arkaah by the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings and then, again, by President Mahama regarding the late former Vice-President Papa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, as bitterly and plaintively attested by the widow of the latter, Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, at the state-sponsored funeral of the former Atta-Mills-appointed Governor of the Bank of Ghana. And presently, we have the 2020 Presidential Running-Mate of the seismically defeated Candidate Mahama being re-fielded for the 2024 Presidential Election, against the widely alleged rumor of fierce resistance among some party stalwarts.

We must also highlight the shameless railroading of the formidable Presidential Candidacy of Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, who was flatly and publicly informed by some party apparatchiks and corporatists, led by the likes of Mr. Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, the National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress, and Mr. Edward K D Adjaho, among a platoon of other party old guards and stalwarts, that, indeed, the National Democratic Congress’ 2024 Presidential-Primary Election, held in May 2023, or thereabouts, had been deliberately rigged to favor the Bole-Bamboi native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region. So, there are several telling signs of NDC strategic gimmickry vis-à-vis the so-called “Akyem Project,” purported to be encapsulated in or epitomized by the so-called "Agyapadeε” Document that has recently been made a major political football event by disaffected elements of the New Patriotic Party who have almost overnight and expediently become ardent supporters, sympathizers and hired goons and thugs of the kleptocratic and the kleptomaniacal National Democratic Congress, most notable among whom are Messrs. Hopeson Adorye, Ohene Ntow and Yaw Buaben Asamoa, all of whom were recently summarily expelled from the ruling New Patriotic Party.

But what is equally fascinating to bring to public attention is the fact that while Candidate Mahama, who recently took brief tour of the Russian Federation, where he once studied political communications propaganda, and his surrogates have categorically told the nation that they are deathly averse to doing or undertaking any “Asante Projects,” these same rabidly Anti-Asante cabal of State-Capture goons would also brazenly float out feelers and signals that they intend to fiercely fight for a lion’s share of the “Asante Vote.” Which ought to make any critically thinking and civically sane and responsible Ghanaian citizen wonder, precisely what Asantehene-insulting political scumbags like the Gonja native take ethnic Asantes for. Some pansies or flukes or simply a slab of rotten toast or some clinical retards?

But, of course, there is enough blame to go around on both sides of the political divide, as Americans are wont to say. For example, crisscrossing the country and childishly and rather unwisely telling Ghanaian citizens and voters that there is absolutely no way, shape or form that a lame-duck President Akufo-Addo will hand over the democratic reins of governance to even a hypothetically democratically and fairly elected Candidate Mahama, only makes matters worse for the credibility and the integrity of Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, the Akufo-Addo-appointed and sworn Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). It also makes one wonder whether, indeed, Nana Akufo-Addo is not illegally hooked up on some banned barbiturates. It also tells Ghanaians a disturbing bit about the kind of family in which their former Foreign Minister was raised or grew up in.

Ever more disturbingly, it flagrantly exposes the former Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice as a man who woefully lacks the kind of morally reflective gravitas required of any politician or self-envisaged statesman or woman who wants to be taken seriously by his/her people and his/her nation. It also callously puts what Americans call a “Monkey Wrench” into the already uphill electioneering-campaign battle of Candidate Bawumia against a relatively more seasoned and strategically knavish political opportunist of a Machiavellian opponent, thereby making the work of the most important political associate of an emotionally unbalanced Nana Akufo-Addo even more difficult.

On the latter count, Nana Akufo-Addo may be aptly envisaged to be strategically obtuse and far more toxic to both Candidates Bawumia and Opoku-Prempeh than a largely bumbling and politically comical and asinine and strategically and morally and fatally defective Candidates Mahama and Naana Opoku-Agyemang.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
August 2, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]