Thanks to Mustapha Hamid, the NPP’s Age-long Academic Grandiosity has been exposed as a Phony Charade

Mustapha Abdul Hamid (Ph. D) is one of the finest academics in Ghana. He was this writer’s Students Representative Council (SRC) president at the University of Cape Coast(UCC) in the 1998/99 academic year. Dr. Hamid was not only an orator but also as brilliant as his two other northern compatriots, who were also student leaders: Haruna Iddrisu and Mohammed Adams Amin Anta (Ph. D.), Ghana’s current education minister and President Akufo-Addo’s finance minister, respectively. Dr. Hamid and Dr. Amin are products of UCC, whereas Mr. Haruna Iddrisu is a product of the University of Ghana (UG). The writer and some of his colleagues used to call the three of them “triumvirates,” always debating who was better. Nonetheless, reeling under partisan expediency, the heretofore great academic, Dr. Mustapha Hamid, has startlingly stooped very low, making baseless statements, as evidenced by the following comments attributed to him. “In the past they referred to us as book long party then we allowed the NDC to blackmail us that we are a party of intellectuals so we ran away from that tag then we evolved as “veranda party”. So people in the party started speaking by heart, insulting like the NDC so as we evolved in that light the NDC was courting our elites and CSOs, middle class, labour etc”.

Dr. Hamid, per the afore-referenced statement, appeared to be influenced by a cognitive bias known as the illusory truth effect. In psychology, the illusory truth effect refers to the tendency to believe falsehood to be valid after repeated exposure to it. Simply put, it refers to the belief that persistent lies can be valid when repeated to people over a long period of time. The illusory truth effect is sometimes effective in political propaganda and job interviews when it is positively used as impression management (behaviors intended to control how others perceive oneself, especially by guiding them to attribute desirable traits to oneself).

One example of the illusory truth effect is the belief that God is male. In the ancient Near East, in the Fertile Crescent, society was predominantly patriarchal. God was perceived as male because men documented the early scriptures. Ancient societies that were not bereft of matriarchal cultural imperatives might have perceived God to be female in the scripture. Needless to say, Xenophanes of Colophon (570 BC) posited that if animals like cattle, sheep, or goat could reason like humans, these animals would have perceived God in their own images: cattle as the image of cattle, sheep as the image of sheep, goat as the image of goat, just as men as sentient creatures engaged in the illusory truth effect that man was created in God’s own likeness, while no man had seen God before to identify his/her image.

If not for the illusory truth effect and impression management, why would Mustapha Hamid describe the following President Rawlings Ministers as non-intellectuals? Dr. Obed Asamoah (JD), Mohammed Ibn Chambas, Ph. D., Benjamin Kunbour, Ph. D., Kwesi Botcwhey, Ph. D., Tony Aidoo, Ph. D., Kofi Awonoor, Ph. D. (A professor), President J. E. A Mills (Ph. D.), Kwabena Dufour, Ph. D., and Mary Grant (MD). How about the following individuals: Mohammed Mumuni, Tsatsu Tsikata, Nana Ato Dadzie, Doe Adjaho, Martin Amidu, Alban Bagbin, Asiedu Nketia, John Mahama (President), Spio Garbrah, Kofi Totobi Kwakyi, Kwamena Ahwoi, Paul Victor Obeng, J. H Owusu Acheampong and many other NDC stalwarts and aficionados.

From the outset of multi- party democracy, the NDC could boast of a bevy of scholars. For an intellectual of no mean repute like Mustapha Hamid to posit that the NDC from the beginning of 1992 was not attractive to scholars is nothing short of the NPP’s age-long academic grandiosity aimed at hoodwinking the Ghanaian electorate. So, you see, dear Dr. Hamid, without facts, it is not commensurable to your academic status to be making such vague statements. It is an error to think that the NPP had more intellectuals than the NDC. NDC appeared to have garnered strategies to build gravitas at the grassroots, which were lacking in the NPP. Have a good day!

By Nana Yaw Osei, Ph. D., Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA