Trust Me, Brother Rashid Tanko, NPP Did Not Kill Omane-Boamah Et Al. - Part 2

With the singular exception of the late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, subsequently, the twice consecutively elected President of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, and the very first of his kind, for obvious reasons, of course, it is predictably ironic, and scandalously so, that the leadership of the least progressively performing political party in Ghana’s postcolonial history, would also be the most pathologically addicted to institutional and individual self-glorification. We first witnessed this most opprobrious display of vanity and vaingloriousness in the wake of the “Mysterious” passing of the then-Sitting President John Evans Atta-Mills on July 24, 2012.

Back then, the most obtuse attempt was made to have the man whose political mentor had the acute embarrassment to describe his former protegee as the most wasted leadership talent in our time. And to complicate mattress even more, the then-former President Rawlings made his aforereferenced dressing-down at the gravesite of his erudite former Right-Hand Man and former Tax-Law Professor at the country’s oldest and flagship academy, the University of Ghana, Legon.

Earlier on, the longest-ruling junta leader had attempted to democratically oust a politically anemic President Mills, affectionately and reverently called THE PROFESSOR or Professor Atta-Mills, at a National Convention of the very political party establishment, namely, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), of which he was and is still the globally acclaimed Founding-Father, by replacing his former Vice-President with his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, Ghana’s longest-reigning First Lady, whom some Rawlings’ critics claim to have been the country’s de-facto Co-President, with her husband, for some Two Decades. But as fate would have it, the Rawlingses would bathetically end up having irreparably overplayed their hands. Henceforth, it would be a precipitous downward spiral for these two Implacable Conjugal Butchers to the very end.

On the latter count, however, the Dear Reader would be tempted to ask: What has the foregoing practically got to do with the proverbial price of a pound of teabags or tea leaves in Beijing? And the most obvious and logical answer, of course, is “ A Lot!” if not, in fact, “Everything!” Which, of course, also brings us right back on track to the subject of the apparently rancidly pathological addiction of the “Do-Nothing” Leadership of Ghana’s presently ruling National Democratic Congress to morbid self-adulation and, in our particular instance, what President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama recently had the chutzpah and the occasion to inform Ghana’s electorate and the citizenry, that his Government had studiously embarked upon a National Development Agenda called CENOTAPHICATION, during which moment and period all cabinet appointees who expired or perished in the line of duty would have a Cenotaph like the one recently erected in honor and the memory of his Z-9 Helicopter-slain former Minister of Defense, to wit, Dr. Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah (1975-2025),

Dr. Omane-Boamah, according to a historiographically illiterate President Mahama - the man who smugly claims to have sedulously boned up on the entire gamut of African History, and literally burned up both the metaphorical midnight oil, wicker and lamp as well, at the University of Ghana, and come up at the very top of his class (lol!) - was the first Defense Minister in Ghana’s Postcolonial History to have died in office.

Which, in of itself, in the metaphorical playbook of Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja, decidedly qualities his slain former Defense Minister to have a Cenotaph erected in the honor and the “Eternal Memory” of Dr. Edward Kofi Oamne-Boamah. At this most comical declaration, Yours Truly began to wonder whether, indeed, the Bole-Bamboi native from the former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, had not opened a proverbial “Can of Worms” or, maybe, even a mythological “Pandora’s Box.”

You see, Dear Reader, I am not a Classicist like my former good, old and genius Nigerian colleague at my old State University of New York (SUNY) Community College from which I was tactically and strategically hammered the hell out of, literally speaking. I had even, in retrospect, naively assumed Jake (Not his real name) to have been my bosom Indigenous Continental African Brother. Which also reminds me of a book on the globally infamous Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), titled “Sunset In Biafra,” by a prominent educator called Mr. Elechi Amadi, a Mathematician by training, if Yours Truly recalls accurately, in which the author-narrator talks about having been traumatically betrayed by a Ghanaian national. Yes, I always believed Jake to be my very dear and bosom-buddy, as we hereabouts, until I got myself stampeded out of our Diamond Tower. I would wait for a Solid Six Months, that is, a Half-Year, to receive a consolatory “wound-dressing” phone call from this otherwise brilliant Edo Boy. And when Jake finally called, it would be to leave me a message rambling and mumbling some poppycock about how he thought that I had been darn too busy enjoying my seismic jackbooting from our College that he had decided not to disturb my peace of mind. Is that how the Edo people of Nigeria get their peace of mind? And all along, some of us have been thinking about how strikingly similar are indigenous African cultural traditions.

Anyway, I finally turned to AI, that is, the Almighty and systematically comical Artificial Intelligence. You see, how sometimes when you ask AI or, rather, Auntie AI or Uncle AI, for that matter, for instance: “What is a Cenotaph?” and the answer you get right back is some %#& like “Senator”?! I suppose this may have something to do with my reasonably well-educated Standard Ghanaian Accent. You see how even a technologically diapered kid like AI has so soon “alacritistically” taken to playing Right-Wing MAGA Games with unabashedly Afrocentric freedom fighters like Yours Truly?

At any rate, I guess what Yours Truly is trying to suggest here is that going by Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja’s logic for erecting and installing a Cenotaph in memory of Dr. Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah, right in front of Ghana’s Ministry of Defense’s Building or edifice, it equally stands to reason that all other ministerial or cabinet appointees of all the previous postcolonial Ghanaian governments who died in the line of duty, whether the governments in which they served were military juntas or democratically elected by snatching and/or destroying ballot boxes, deserve to have Cenotaphs erected for them and mounted in front of the ministries which they headed. Moreso, when from my personal gleanings of the dozens of media reports on President Mahama’s recent unveiling of the Omane-Boamah Cenotaph, the latter monument, which one would rather have relocated to the National Democratic Congress’ National Headquarters or, possibly, a museum, where it really belongs, was neither commissioned nor fiscally underwritten by the Mahama Presidency or Ghana’s Parliament but by a private donor, we are informed, whose identity or nationality has yet to be publicly revealed.

Could this be yet another “Wool-Pulling” a la Kwaku Asante Berko Payola Scam? No, we cannot have the Payola-Inebriate Mahama-led Government of the National Democratic Congress so cheaply sell our sovereignty, national sense of moral integrity and civic responsibility down the auction block, once again. To Hell with such Guilt-Ridden Statuary Caricatures! How about a Cenotaph for Dr. Ibrahim “The Scarface” Murtala Muhammed right in front of the Ministry of the Environment, Science and Technology? And mind you, Dear Reader, that would be just two out of eight justifiable Cenotaphs! But then, didn’t Mr. Mahama characteristically contradict himself, to say the least, when in the process of unveiling the Omane-Boamah Cenotaph, Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja made the following most perspicuous observation: “The greatest memorial we can build is not one made of stone or bronze; it is one that is built through responsible leadership, improved systems, and a steadfast commitment to protecting those who dedicate themselves to national service. National Service, Indeed, Yagbonwura!

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