How Can Francis-Xavier Sosu Fight Galamsey, When Candidate Mahama Is Chief Promoter?

As an individual, I have absolutely no doubt that Mr. Francis-Xavier Sosu, the National Democratic Congress-sponsored Member of Parliament for Madina Constituency, in Northeastern Greater-Accra Region, may be a remarkably “righteous man,” as Mr. Samuel “Sammy” Gyamfi, the National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), claims (See “Election 2024: Francis-Xavier Sosu's re-election crucial for galamsey fight — Sammy Gyamfi urges Madina Clergy” Modernghana.com 10/25/24).

However, the more significant question to ask here is whether the man who recently put in an electioneering-campaign presence for Mr. Sosu, a locally renowned albeit a rather controversial lawyer, is himself “righteous” and politically credible enough to make such a critical and morally significant judgment call. You see, an overwhelming majority of Ghanaian citizens and the electorate have still not forgotten the criminal and the defamatory role that Mr. Gyamfi, then called the Propaganda Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, played in the Kumasi Kidnapping of the Three, White Canadian NGO Volunteers and the fallout from the latter most scandalous event that resulted in Mr. Gyamfi being found liable to have deliberately and maliciously defamed Dr. Matthew Yaw Opoku-Prempeh, at the time the Manhyia-South’s New Patriotic Party-sponsored Member of Parliament, from the Asante Region.

We are not here in the least bit concerned about the fact of whether the insufferably obdurate Mr. Gyamfi, who had initially been afforded the rather generous opportunity by Dr. Opoku-Prempeh - aka NAPO - to publicly retract and apologize and promptly withdraw his most reprehensible and outrageous remarks had been able to pay the fine and damages imposed on him by a Justice Gyamfi, who was reported to have no relationship with the National Democratic Congress’ equivalent of Mr. Squealer of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” satirical novel. What we are most singularly interested in here, however, is to kindly and charitably advise the Madina NDC-MP that he, Mr. Sosu, would be much better off banking on his own performance track record over the past four years, assuming that it is reasonably remarkable, to appeal to his predominantly Muslim constituents to return him to Ghana’s 9th Parliament.

It is quite emphatically and crystal clear that whatever Mr. Gyamfi recently said on his behalf before a group of some Christian Charismatic Religious Community Leaders is neither worth the breath nor the newsprint and media space and time via which they had been conveyed to the general Ghanaian public. Even so, the single most comical aspect of Mr. Gyamfi’s rather scandalous appeal to the Madina Christian Community Leaders for their staunch support of his party’s 2024 Parliamentary Candidate for the Madina Constituency was that, somehow, Candidate Sosu could help the National Democratic Congress to put up a vigorous battle against Galamsey or illegal small-scale mining activities in the country, when it was an open secret to the entire nation that the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress, namely, former President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, is the foremost promoter of Galamsey in our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

This is what while Yours Truly was in middle school and high school, as well, we used to liken to the well-worn cliche of attempting to transport coal in England from London to Newcastle, one of the major coal-mining townships in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The truth of the matter is that there is absolutely nothing that Candidate Sosu can do to help abate or assuage the present horrific specter of Galamsey, while a President Mahama, who used the reckless promotion of Galamsey to win dozens of parliamentary seats for the National Democratic Congress in the 2020 General Election, continues to criminally and unconscionably promote Galamsey as a practically rational alternative to his government’s woeful inability to create livable-wage jobs for the great army of talented and able-bodied Ghanaian youths whose Fee-Free access to Senior High, Technical, Vocational and STEM Education System and game-changing opportunities, the then President Mahama fiercely opposed on the dubious grounds that a Fee-Free Secondary Education System was apt to significantly lower the already NDC-bankrupted quality of the country’s public education system.

It was also interesting for this author to learn that absolutely none of of the Christian clergymen and women who had reportedly conferred with Mr. Gyamfi had been the least bit fooled by his strategically opportunistic and expedient attempt to paper over the fact that a self-proclaimed Christian-Faith Confessing Candidate Mahama attempts to “Out-Muslim” the Islam-Confessing Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, annually and seasonally, whenever it is time for The Ramadan and The Hajj or the Islamic Pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

Not surprisingly, asked why an openly “Christocentric” Candidate Francis-Xavier Sosu has not been actively involved in organizing pilgrimages for Christian-Faith Confessing Madina residents and other Ghanaian Christians to visit some Ancient Holy Sites in Palestine or Israel, such as Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Mr. Sosu is reported to have responded bashfully that he was completely unfamiliar with any such Christocentric religious need. Talk of political opportunism!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
Oct. 25, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]