Isn’t General Mosquito a Professionally Trained Soldier?

The National Democratic Congress (NDC), Ghana’s main opposition political party, has a professionally trained, superannuated soldier by the name of “Lt-Col.” Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, so it is downright preposterous for the National Organizer of the “Military Founded” National Democratic Congress, Mr. Joseph Yamin, to be scandalously and virulently decrying the alleged “unofficial” deployment of some 200 personnel from the Ghana Armed Forces from the Greater-Accra Region to the Asante Region, ahead of the December 7, 2024 General Election (See “Election 2024: NDC accuses NPP of illegal deployment of 200 soldiers to Ashanti Region for December 7” Modernghana.com 12/6/24).

On the latter count, we also need to highlight the historically verifiable fact that in the runup to the December 2016 General Election, the then-Incumbent President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama deployed some 2,000 (Two-Thousand) soldiers to the Eastern Regional Capital of Koforidua and its environs weeks ahead of that year’s General Election, although there was absolutely no evidence of the likelihood of any incidents of violence flaring up in the electoral stronghold of the then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Presidential Candidate of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Among our people and one also supposes the same to be the case with all civilized societies around the world, there is a wise and common maxim which runs tersely as follows: “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” Already, the leaders of the National Democratic Congress have strongly signaled to the rest of the nation that they studiously and doggedly intend to pursue their own ungodly course of action and protocol in the runup to the December 7, 2024 General Election, in particular the December 7, 2024 Presidential Election.

Not very long ago, for instance, the Monarchical and the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress, former President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, forcefully and categorically informed the nation that the National Democratic Congress was proudly founded on a bloody tradition of “military” and “revolutionary” violence, and that the leadership of the latter political establishment was not the least bit averse to employing the fetching tool and instrument of “scientific” or organized violence, if the Mahama and the Asiedu-Nketia Posse found the same to be necessary in order to achieve their inevitable and ultimate objective of being either returned by Ghanaian voters to Jubilee House, or forcibly returning themselves to the country’s seat of governance.

And by the way, in the runup to the 2016 General Election, the then-President Mahama also routinely resorted to wearing military uniforms in the dubious name of being the democratically mandated Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces. So, it is unarguably clear that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress evolved out of a judiciary terrorizing and liquidating tradition with the raw application of violence and intimidation as its first choice and foremost tool of political domination and repression.

It is also not clear how Mr. Yamin, the National Organizer of the National Democratic Congress, came by the patently apocryphal intelligence or information that the lame-duck Akufo-Addo Administration would deploy a diddly or a miserly number of 200 soldiers, that is, just 10-percent of the total number of soldiers officially deployed deployed by “Commander-in-Chief” John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama from Ghana’s capital of Accra to the Eastern Regional Capital of Koforidua, in the runup to the 2016 General Election, to the Asante Regional Capital of Kumasi, when the Kumasi Metropolis already has the second-largest garrison or military settlement in the entire country. It simply defies common sense!

And by the way, like Mr. Yamin, who was also once the Mahama-appointed Deputy Minister for the Asante Region, Yours Truly also partly grew up at the Kumasi-based Fourth Battalion of Infantry Garrison of the Ghana Armed Forces. At any rate, the mere deployment of a handful of soldiers to a few constituencies in just one region of the country, where foresighted state intelligence officials sense trouble brewing, ought not to be any cause for alarm or inordinate concern, although the leadership of the National Democratic Congress has long and incessantly declared their steely and adamant intention and determination to break what they characterize as the electoral stranglehold of the most populous administrative region in the country, by the ruling New Patriotic Party, even while also jealously ensuring that the northern-half of the country, in particular, the so-called Five Northern Regions, firmly and hermetically remained in the hands and under the effective command and control of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress, very much in the way that they have been over the past three decades.

So, the reader gets a fair idea about the sort of political soccer that the key operatives of Ghana’s largest opposition political party have been playing and intend to play in the foreseeable future. Matters are also not the least bit meliorated by the recent dastardly attempt by an anti-democratic cabal within the leadership ranks of the National Democratic Congress, led by the Speaker of Ghana’s 8th Parliament, Mr. Alban S K Bagbin, and Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, with the staunch backing of the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, the twice-rejected, one-term former President John “The Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying” Dramani Mahama, to criminally usurp the democratically mandated power of the Parliamentary Majority Caucus and the influence of the ruling New Patriotic Party, by a deliberate prejudicial misreading and misinterpretation of one of the Articles of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution, verging on the matter of disgruntled Members of Parliament who announce their intention to run as Independents in the next electoral season or cycle but, for the nonce, remain bona fide members and representatives of their constituents in either of the country’s two major political parties on whose tickets these would be Independents or Renegades rode their victory horses and parades into Ghana’s National Assembly.

The historically anomalous and the constitutionally unwarranted decision by Speaker Bagbin to name Chairman Asiedu-Nketia to the Executive Board of the Parliamentary Affairs Committee, or some such Advisory Board, is also another serious signal that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress is implacably averse to playing by the rules of the highest and the most authoritative instrument of democratic governance of the country. This is presently where matters stand.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
December 6, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]