This Politics of Brown-Nosing Stinks!

An August 29, 2007, feature article that appeared in the Ghanaian Statesman, titled “Why I Will Give My Vote to Aliu Mahama,” attempted to slander me as well as insult my intelligence by the writer obliquely implying that a previous article which I had written, titled “The 'Mahama Loyalists' Have No Sense of History,” was squarely predicated on a grossly misplaced and outright jaundiced perspective.

I, ordinarily, would not respond to such hogwash and gratuitous abuse, but the arrogance and condescending tenor of the aforementioned article, vis-à-vis the people whose “divine” cause the writer claims to be representing, necessitates a swift and corrective response, lest the writer misinterprets my dignified silence for the righteousness of his cause.

In essence, this is how the writer characterized my previous article: “In an article recently published on Ghanaweb, someone criticized a group purported to be rooting for Aliu and the writer was annoyed that the group by their action was trying to bring ethnic tension in[sic] the NPP primaries. I cannot fathom the rationale behind his thinking. ¶ If a group thinks for 50 years of our independence this is the first time an indigenous northner is close to taking the highest office of the land and therefore to avoid a perceived ethnic sentimentality we should give the nod to Aliu, what is wrong with that? What is more, in marketing the various aspirants, supporters will use all strategies to convince the Delegates[sic] and there is nothing wrong[sic].”

Is there any wonder that the London-based writer failed to mention me by name and, instead, chose the rather sophomoric and outright cowardly device of a first-person neutral pronoun, although within the same paragraph the writer indicated my gender by his usage of the third-person possessive pronoun of his? For nowhere in my previous article did I indicate “annoyance” or impugn the right of the “Mahama Loyalists” to shill for their candidate.

What, in fact, I had aptly questioned was the erroneous historical basis – the Clinton-Gore era of American politics – on which the “Mahama Loyalists” had predicated their stentorian call for the ruling New Patriotic Party to circumvent, or flatly disregard, the party's legitimately ratified constitution in order to shoo-in the presidential nomination of Ghana's incumbent Vice-President.

Likewise, nowhere did I accuse the “Mahama Loyalists” of “trying to bring ethnic tension in[sic] the NPP primaries.” What I had actually observed was that in cynically attempting to predicate Alhaji Mahama's fortunes at the upcoming NPP Delegates' Convention on an ethnocentric “Southern” litmus test, the accusers (i.e. “Mahama Loyalists”) were themselves guilty of unduly factoring into the electoral fortunes of their candidate their very own “ethnic” and/or “geographical” affinity, for they likely were exuberantly championing Mr. Mahama's cause because the latter hailed from the “North,” just like themselves, or perhaps belonged to the same ethnic group – or sub-nationality – as themselves.

And so where does “Mr. Someone” come by all his nonsense about Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe attempting to impugn the democratic right of the “Mahama Loyalists” to vigorously campaigning for the Veep? I hope this is the last time that “Mr. Someone” would fatuously and shamelessly attempt to brownnose, or curry favor with the “Mahama Loyalists,” by gratuitously attempting to straw-man my views in order to display his clearly nonexistent intellectual puissance or genius.

And if, perchance, he finds my version of Standard English too challenging to appreciate, then, by all means, it is not too late for “Mr. Someone” to enroll into a “Critical Thinking” course. I am quite sure there are a legion of reputable colleges in London and its vicinity where such courses are taught.

As for the writer's baloney about “Divine Justice” having dictated that the NPP presidential nomination be summarily handed over to Alhaji Mahama on a silver platter, the least said about it, the better. The pity of it all, though, is that “Mr. Someone” lives in London, the very heart of global Anglophone democracy. And what chutzpah, for him to be pontificating on how to run a legitimate, democratic political culture in Ghana on the capricious and whimsical basis of “Divine Justice”!

And just who said that President Hilla Limann, of Sissala ethnic extraction, was not an “indigenous” northern Ghanaian? And also that unlike Mr. Mahama, Dr. Limann was ill-prepared to govern our country? You see, if were he, “Mr. Someone,” that is, I would be seated in the Library voraciously reading about the history of Northern Ghanaian Leadership, rather making a big fool of myself the way he just did with his article.

Needless to say, anybody who thinks that the administrative capital of Ghana has to be relocated to the northern-half of country, in order to ensure the proper development of the region, ought not to be running for any form or level of political office; for such bizarre thinking readily exposes the utter ideological bankruptcy of the “thinker” (no pun intended, of course).

It is also rather sickening to read the following sentence from “Mr. Someone”: “But after brainstorming on all the personalities and the regions they come from, I am inclined by the force of Divine Justice to give my vote to Alhaji Aliu Mahama.” “Divine” what? Lunacy? And just where has this “force of Divine Justice” been lurking all these years that the “Northerner” likes of Messrs. Alban Bagbin, Akata Pore, Moses Ayariga, John Mahama, Kumbour and all the others have been colluding and collaborating with Mr. Rawlings to bring development to the “North,” whose woeful lack of the desired level of development “Mr. Someone” has the temerity to blame on us “Southerners”?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “The New Scapegoats: Colored-on-Black Racism” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].