Cousin Palgrave, Loyalty Is a Two-Way Gesture, Not a One-Way Street

I perfectly agree with the Akufo-Addo relative and, perhaps my own relative as well, by the rather funny and neocolonialist name of Dr. “Palgrave” Boakye-Danquah - very likely the name of the white-American New York City publisher of Nana Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye-Danquah, better known globally as Dr. J B Danquah, for whom or after whom the sometime Spokesperson on Governance and Security in the recently exited Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was very likely named, that while the metaphorical buck may, indeed, not be reckoned to have fully fallen on the doorstep of then Vice-President Mahamudu “Issaka” Bawumia, it still can absolutely not be gainsaid that to the extent that he was officially the second in command or the second most-powerful elected politician and leader of the twice consecutively, NPP-sponsored Akufo-Addo Government, it absolutely does not stand the Oxbridge-educated economist of remarkable international repute in good stead to pretend as if he had been a complete bystander or onlooker who had been effectively prevented from calling his fair share of the shots that ultimately resulted in the crushing failure of the institutional establishment of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired neoliberal New Patriotic Party (See “Blaming Others Does Not Equate to Accountability - Palgrave Tells Bawumia” AdomOnline.com / MyJoyOnline.com 4/28/25).

More so, when the Walewale native from the Akufo-Addo-created North-East Region has also been widely reported by the media and several of his most ardent rivals and political opponents for the 2028 Presidential Nomination of the Elephant Riders’ Party, including or most especially Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong of taking nearly all the credit for the bulk of the national development achievements of the erstwhile Akufo-Akufo government without accepting a single of the blame for its failures. In other words, if the Simon Fraser University, Canada, doctoral-degree graduate has decided to be unsparing in his claim of credit for dozens of the successful national development achievements notched by the Akufo-Addo Administration, then, of course, it equally goes without saying that Dr. Bawumia also needs to be morally and psychologically mature enough to publicly accept the practically inescapable fact of his human fallibility and, consequently, his fair share of the foibles and the policy failures of the Akufo-Addo regime, especially in cases where he could have promptly taken a bold and firm stand against many of the nation-wrecking shenanigans brazenly engineered by some Akufo-Addo associates, minions and relatives, to be certain.

For example, nobody ever heard the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana publicly and constructively make any critical remarks about the wantonly criminal and the judicially capital albeit abortive attempt by the two most infamous relatives of the former President, namely, Messrs. Kenneth (Nana Yaw) Ofori-Atta, the former Finance Minister, and Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere Darko, the self-proclaimed Mahama bosom friend and the Mahama-described de-facto Prime Minister without Portfolio of the Akufo-Addo government, to literally mortgage the mineral resources of Our Beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, in what globally became known as the Agyapa Mineral Heritage Investment Mega-Heist, an egregious and unpardonably treasonous act of immitigable depravity that nearly cost the New Patriotic Party the 2020 General Election and effectively resulted in what hitherto unprecedentedly became known as Ghana’s “Hung Eighth Parliament,” except for that strategically mischievous and downright suicidal moment in the wake of his selection of Dr. Matthew (Nana Yaw) Opoku-Prempeh and the equally mischievous sudden appearance of a wheelchair-bound former President Agyekum-Kufuor in the auditorium of the Madina, Accra, based University of Development Studies (UPSA). It is at this juncture that the former Vice-President could have accurately been described as an Akufo-Addo back-stabber. So, after all, Alhaji “Issaka” Bawumia may not be as politically “loyal” and dedicated to the man who fiercely fought his party kingmakers to make the widely purported bona fide National Democratic Congress’ stalwart his four-time presidential running-mate.

On the latter issue, however, it is equally hypocritical on the part of the so-called Akufo-Addo Spokesperson on Governance and Security to cavalierly pretend as if the rankly corrupt complicity of the extant President in the Agyapa Mineral Heritage Investment Mega-Heist - Nana Akufo-Addo kept deviously tweaking the Agyapa Contractual Scam and pressuring an NPP-dominated Parliament to rubberstamp the same - could not have absolutely in any way been prevented by Vice-President Bawumia. As well, the crude and the despicably primitive arrogance of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in ordering some culturally prominent and significant northern chiefs to get out of their seats and chairs in order to recognize the visiting Akyem-Abomosu petty chieftain, was a basic matter of abject lack of good manners over which the then Vice-President could not have done anything constructive or remediative about; it simply reflected the bad manners and the unspeakably poor home-training of the self-infatuated “Dwarf” whom the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings described as being irredeemably unqualified to accede or succeed to the august portfolio of Our Beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

Which obviously, of course, is not to suggest absolutely in any way that the US-Deportee-Hosting and Terror-Suspect-Hosting President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama is any better. As well, Nana Akufo-Addo’s flat and adamant refusal to reshuffle the members of his cabinet on the indefensibly imperious grounds that “I am pleased with the performance of all my ministerial appointees,” was one that unarguably smacked of the sort of overweening pride and pathological arrogance that Dr. Palgrave Boakye-Danquah has been widely reported to have dubiously chalked up to former Vice-President Bawumia’s withering “disloyalty” to the man who selected the latter as his presidential running-mate for four general election cycles!

Well, as I recently reminded My Dear Kid Uncle and former Akufo-Addo-appointed Works and Housing Minister, Mr. Samuel “The Martin Amidu-Savaging” Atta-Akyea, the first and foremost loyalty of the Vice-President and, to be certain, all the key cabinet appointees of any democratically elected government, that is, each and every one of these ministers and their deputies and assigns or representatives, is to the “Sovereign Citizens of the Republic of Ghana,” the very people who offered their sacred and their collective mandate to our government officials, and not to the individual personality of the President or the Presidency of Ghana, unlike the United Kingdom of Great Britain, a country of immeasurable sentimental fervor and great affinity verging on religious worship on the part of “Prince Akufo-Addo,” is a Veritable Postcolonial Republic, and not a Neo-Feudal Republic, although looking at the leadership conduct of Messrs.Akufo-Addo and Dramani Mahama, one would think that Ghana was still under the primitive tutelage of our erstwhile British colonial overlords or, these days, perhaps under the surrogate neocolonialist suzerainty of Trumpian America.

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