Blame Culture of Rancor and Politics of Personal Destruction for NPP’s 2024 Defeat

It is downright infantile and inexcusably simplistic for any key player and operative of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to solely and exclusively blame former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the massive hemorrhage and the historically unprecedented defeat of the Elephant Party in the December 7, 2024 General Election, as the former Member of Parliament for Manso-Nkwanta, in the Asante Region, Mr. George Obeng-Takyi, has been reported by the media to be claiming (See “Akufo-Addo should accept that he caused NPP's defeat in election 2024 – Ex-Manso Nkwanta MP Obeng Takyi” Modernghana.com 1/28/25).

The truth and the practical reality of the matter is that even self-righteous accusers like the former Manso-Nkwanta Member of Parliament is and was a part and parcel of the reason why the New Patriotic Party massively and decisively lost the 2024 General Election. In sum, as Americans are fond of saying, “There is enough blame to go around.” Actually, more than enough blame to go around. You see, the first problem that made it extremely difficult for the New Patriotic Party to break the “Jinxy-8” was the seemingly Komfo Anokye Sword-like entrenchment of mutual self-hatred among the fractious topmost leadership of the party, namely, former Presidents John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor and Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

You see, the very first manifestation of such withering and inveterate mutuality of the blatant exhibition of such hatred came in the wake of the release of the Anas Aremeyaw Anas-produced filmographic documentary exposé titled Number 12, in which we had Mr. Kwasi Nyantakyi telling some fake Arab business moguls that all it took to be given carte-blanche access to Ghana’s investment market, was to pay the payola sums of $5 million and $3 million, respectively, to then President Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Bawumia, who were cheaply on the take. Former President Agyekum-Kufuor would be widely reported by the media to be exhorting members of the general Ghanaian public to swamp the movie theaters where Number 12 was showing, in order to have a first-hand experience of how thoroughgoing corrupt Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia were.

Were he, indeed, as objectively concerned about the good fortunes of the New Patriotic Party as he would have the rest of his countrymen and women believe, Mr. Obeng-Takyi would also have promptly balanced his anti-Akufo-Addo tirade by informing us about the far-reaching negative impact that a lame-duck President Agyekum-Kufuor’s cavalier mantra of “Corruption has been with us humans from Adam and Eve” had on the electoral fortunes of the party over the course of the next two or three electoral seasons. In short, the real and the most significant question to ask here is the following: Did former President Agyekum-Kufuor leave the New Patriotic Party any more unified than former President Akufo-Addo? And the most obvious and logical answer is: Absolutely Not!

We must also promptly note here that Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor’s very public and most vitriolic attempt to unspeakably destroy the political profiles and the reputations of Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia came scarcely a month or two into the very first term of the tenures of these two most progressive Ghanaian leaders. It is a sheer wonder of miraculous proportions, therefore, that Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Bawumia were able to clinch two consecutive electoral mandates. We have also pointed out, based primarily on his own personal testimony and pronouncement to a BBC reporter in 2008, during that year’s Presidential-Election Runoff between Nana Akufo-Addo and the late then former Vice-President and Candidate John Evans Atta-Mills, that the then recently outgone President Agyekum-Kufuor had voted for the latter Presidential Candidate of the then main opposition National Democratic Congress, and not his immediate successor to the topmost ticket of the New Patriotic Party.

Yet, Mr. Obeng-Takyi conveniently pretends as if Nana Akufo-Addo’s admittedly nihilistic and strategically suicidal behavior and attitude had been completely cultivated in a vacuum when, in reality, it had inescapably been provoked or inspired and nurtured by the politically regressive culture of vengeance and the politics of personal destruction by the key operatives of the Agyekum-Kufuor and the Mpiani Faction of the New Patriotic Party.

Equally significant must be highlighted the fact that the same centrifugal polarity of mutually cultivated animus that has characterized the conspicuously frosty and unspeakably frigid relationship between the operatives of the Agyekum-Kufuor and the Akufo-Addo factions of the party for decades, has been unenviably duplicated or replicated at the Kokomlemle National Headquarters of the New Patriotic Party, another strategically regressive phenomenon that none of the most acerbic and rabid critics of Nana Akufo-Addo have either conveniently or deliberately neglected to take into serious account, if, indeed, as Mr. Obeng-Takyi would have the rest of us believe, the New Patriotic Party is to be made poised to reassume the mantle of democratic stewardship, once again, come the December 2028 General Election.

We are also well aware of the strenuous attempts made by the Agyekum-Kufuor and the Kwadwo Mpiani Faction of the New Patriotic Party, with massive support from such brazen and unabashed Asante Nationalists as Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, the immediate younger brother of the former President, Prof. Ivan Addae-Mensah, Prof. Stephen Adei and self-styled Asante Nationalist Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, to scuttle the historically unprecedented Akufo-Addo-implemented Universally Fee-Free Senior High, Technical, Vocational and STEM Education System, on spurious grounds of fiscal constraints, without equally calling for the scrapping of the even more capital-intensive Agyekum-Kufuor-implemented low-premium National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), royally bungled by the previous Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress, opportunely and auspiciously resuscitated by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

We are also painfully aware of the pivotal role played by Agyekum-Kufuor and the Mpiani Faction of the New Patriotic Party, with the collusive and the collaborative complicity of some members of the National House of Chiefs and the Asante Federation, to effectively scuttle the December 19, 2019 Akufo-Addo-tabled Referendum that was geared towards the direct election of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) throughout the country, a progressive political initiative that had been spearheaded by this author behind the scenes and which the then President Akufo-Addo characterized as a salutary means of deeping Ghana’s democratic culture.

Now, based on the rank and the rancid divisiveness of the leadership of the New Patriotic Party, it is a sheer wonder that the party currently has slightly more than 80 seats in Ghana’s Parliament. This is pretty much reminiscent of the kind of abject lack of leadership discipline and visionary foresight that culminated in the One-Party Democracy of the First Parliament of Ghana’s Fourth Republic in 1992, a bizarre phenomenon that clearly appears to have been haunting the pathologically self-absorbed leadership of the New Patriotic Party to this day.

Going forth, the imperative need for a radical and a generational shakeup of the Elephant Party, so-called, can absolutely neither be gainsaid or ignored, if this relatively more ideologically progressive institutional establishment is to be made relevant and a formidable force to reckon with in Fourth Republican Ghanaian Political Culture. Contrary to what the former Member of Parliament for Manso-Nkwanta would have himself and the rest of his political associates believe, the New Patriotic Party is in dire need of something much more than mere apologies from former President Akufo-Addo.

What the party really needs presently, more than anything else, is a thorough and a radical shakeup in its structural and administrative architecture, especially vis-a-vis the functional relationship between the party’s leadership and the next government that it is able to successfully sponsor into occupancy of Jubilee House. On the latter note, the Ntim Gang - and we use this label in jest or facetiously - may need to borrow a chapter or two from the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Imprint or Playbook. In sum, contrary to what presently prevails at the top echelons of the Elephant’s Bush House, it is the dog that ought to be wagging the tail and not vice-versa.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
January 30, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]