There Was an “Asante Project” before there Was an “Akyem Project” – Part 10

The profiles of the prominent party operatives covered in the “Agyapadeε” Document makes for a quite fascinating reading, if also because, on the whole, they provide critically thinking readers with the sort of salutary insight that points to the fact of the movers-and-the-shakers of the lame-duck Akufo-Addo-led Administration having had firm grips on the affairs of the party and, especially, on how to keep both the internal and the external detractors of the good fortunes of the institutional establishment of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) at arm’s length over the last eight, or so, years and counting.

But well before we proceed any further, I wanted to enlighten readers about the fact of the YouTube clip of some torrents of tirades having been brought to my attention in which Mr. Kevin Baidoo Taylor, the well-known Ghanaian journalist, unleashes a firestorm of vitriol and malediction on Mr. Hopeson Adorye, the recently expelled former arch-lieutenant of the late Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie – aka Sir John – the former General-Secretary of the New Patriotic Party and, until his tragic and untimely passing, of COVID-related ailment, the widely regarded Foremost Kingmaker of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Well, I got in on the middle of Mr. Taylor’s fulminations and was therefore not able to make any head or tail of the theme or the crux of his tirade, except that I strongly suspect that it may very well have something to do with Mr. Adorye’s having prematurely published the unarguably stunning contents of the “Agyapadeε” Document which, very likely, had been marked up for release at least a couple of weeks prior to the watershed December 7, 2024 Ghana General Election, in particular the 2024 Ghana Presidential Election, just as had been strategically done with a vengeance in the runup to the 2020 Presidential Election, in which Ghanaian voters were presented with what later turned out to be the photoshopped image of President Akufo-Addo being handed something in an envelope by somebody, which we were at the time made to believe was a payola package meant to seek favor from the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian citizenry and the electorate and, in particular, to definitively prove that Nana Akufo-Addo was not, after all, the kind of “incorruptible” Ghanaian leader and politician that he wanted most of us bona fide members of the global Ghanaian community to believe that, indeed, he was.

The one great regret here is the predictable and peevishly deliberate and blind failure of the authors and/or the masterminds of the “Agyapadeε” Document to profile unarguably the most dangerous “Ambrose Yankey” – my profound apologies to President Nkrumah – or internal detractor of the New Patriotic Party, to wit, Mr. Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko. Still, what is even more refreshing here is the implicit acknowledgment by the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama that the apparently comprehensive implementation of the recommendations of the strategic contents of the

Agyepadeε” Document is one that he and his ragtag apparatchiks of the empty-promise addicted National Democratic Congress (NDC) could never have been realistically and credibly counted upon to implement to the letter. We shall take up the latter heartfelt confession for a detailed and much fuller discussion in due course.

The substandard performance quality of some key operatives of the New Patriotic Party, as boldly and frankly captured in the “Agyapadeε” Document, ought to guide the widely presumed Next President of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, and his Running-Mate, namely, Dr. Matthew Yaw Opoku-Prempeh, in making the right strategic choices of party operatives for the next four years. What is equally worth noting here is the fact that a critical analysis of the detailed contents of the “Agyapadeε” Document gives one a refreshing insight into why the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor grandnephew firmly believes that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is the greatest Fourth-Republican President of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to the utter chagrin of such inveterate Akufo-Addo detractors and party turncoats as Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, who rather goofily claims Candidate Opoku-Prempeh – aka Napo – to have inexcusably affronted the image, personality, the dignity and the reputation of his own relative and the former President.

You see, in reality, it was Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor who ought to have studiously initiated the necessary “revolutionary” process of thoroughly dismantling the Anti-Akan Fascist Political Architecture of the Rawlings-founded tandem institutional establishments of the erstwhile extortionate junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the present National Democratic Congress. Instead, the Agyekum-Kufuor Cabal and Faction of the New Patriotic Party deliberately, systematically and strategically inadvisably chose to doggedly pursue a politics of vendetta and personal destruction against his former appointee to the cardinal cabinet portfolio of Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and, subsequently, Minister of Foreign Affairs and ECOWAS Regional Integration. The end result was the near-total dismantling of the phenomenal achievements of the Agyekum-Kufuor-led twice-elected government of the New Patriotic Party, including the Agyekum-Kufuor capstone project of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which was thoroughly bankrupted by the previous Mahama regime, and had to be promptly resuscitated by a newly elected Nana Akufo-Addo with the humongous fiscal infusion of more than $2 billion (USD). Among the Akan, the instructive story is told about the ram who lifted one of his hind legs to defecate in the village square and foolishly thought that he was soiling the entire village-state, only to shortly realize that the bulk of his feces was still stuck in his butts.

You see, in spite of this yeomanly attempt to maintain and preserve the legacy of the former Popular-Front Party (PFP) Member of Parliament for Atwima-Nwabiagya, in the Asante Region, during Ghana’s Third Republic, Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor continues to steadily, implacably and covertly work against the resonant success, relatively speaking, of the Akufo-Addo and the Mahamudu Bawumia-led government of the New Patriotic Party. In so doing, it is almost as if the former President is hellbent on committing ideological and political suicide in perpetuity. As well, the alleged substandard performance of Mr. Henry Nana Boakye, General-Secretary of the Youth Wing of the New Patriotic Party, is far more broadly generalized within the structural and the institutional establishment of the party than is being made to seem here. And if, indeed, extreme caution counsels the avoidance of having Nana Boakye being publicly matched up against Mr. George Opare-Addo, General Youth Organizer of the National Democratic Congress, to seriously debate issues pertaining to the respective national-development achievements of the country’s two major political parties, trust me, Dear Reader, pretty much the same case and/or argument can be made for just about any key operative of the new Patriotic Party.

I have personally watched Mr. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Juaboso Constituency, in the Akufo-Addo-created Western-North Region, mercilessly trounce Mr. Henry Kwabena Kokofu, the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Kumasi-Bantama and could not believe my very eyes and ears. Matters were also not helped the least bit by the fact that the moderator of the broadcast -studio debate between the much younger but fleet-footed Mr. Akandoh and a phlegmatic Mr. Kokofu, namely, Nana Afia Pokuaa Kantimpo – aka The Vim Lady – was the brazenly partisan sympathizer of the National Democratic Congress, who mischievously kept covering up for the politically diapered Asiedu-Nketia-chaperoned NDC party-machine operative.

It is rather scandalous for the admittedly pathologically narcissistic and fiscally knavish and inescapably Trumpian Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong to be cut the morally and the politically unflattering image and profile of a latter-day Judas Iscariot, when the real character who unarguably answers to the latter nominal designation is the publicly and shamelessly declared bosom buddy of former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama who, ironically but all-too-predictably, is listed on the rollcall of the most preeminently progressive stalwarts of the New Patriotic Party. Which eerily recalls the long chain of the interminable acts of wanton criminality leading up to the savage and the brutal assassination of Chief Akyea-Mensah – aka Barima Ohemeng – of Akyem-Apedwa, the Mfantsipim-educated Kingmaker grisly slayed and decapitated by some male children and grandchildren of the late Osagyefo Nana Sir Ofori-Atta, I (1881-1943), and shamelessly and unconscionably defended by the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics and his nephew-in-law and father of Ghana’s present lame-duck President, to wit, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Now, you can call the longtime New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for both Assin-North and Assin-Central constituencies, in the Central Region, any name in the book, including that of “Supreme Commander of our ‘Action Troopers’ and all the former criminal elements who are purposed for the final push,” whatever the latter phraseology of “final push” means. What you definitely cannot call the man Kennedy “Akom-Prigozhin” Ohene Agyapong, the rhetorically unruly loose cannon of a shameless “political mercenary,” is a Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko. On the latter count, I sincerely bet my proverbial bottom-dollar.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
August 11, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]