It Is Just a Pathologically Narcissistic Ex-President Kufuor Seeking Undeserved Attention

Naturally, Yours Truly expected a pathologically self-absorbed and a myopically self-serving for President John “Nana Kofi Diawuo” Agyekum-Kufuor to call for the extension of both the 4-year Presidential and the Parliamentary governance and legislative terms to a Half-Decade or 5 protracted years, for obviously no politically or administratively constructive reason than merely enhancing the temporal opportunity for our largely vision-bereft professional politicians to acquire more time to thoroughly cream and empty our National Treasury (See “Kufuor backs proposal for five-year presidential term” Modernghana.com 10/29/26).

Those of our regular readers old enough may recall the two-term President Agyekum-Kufuor cavalierly and flippantly telling off Ghanaian citizens genuinely anxious about the unbearably high spate of official corruption in the country under his tenure to literally “zip it up” or shut up their “snouts” and put up with it, because Divine Providence had ever since the inception of the Creation of Adam and Eve, Our Judeo-Christian and Islamic Ancestral Primal Pair, had preordained the “Act” and the “Art” of Official Corruption as innate and integral to the conduct of human affairs and existence. This at once morally blasphemous and unspeakably despicable Agyekum-Kufuor mantra and observation coincided with the then outgoing Nigerian President and Chief Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Ogunboye Aremu Obasanjo’s desperate bid to prolong his tenure, circa 2008 and 2009.

Which is also precisely why even as I write and You, the Dear Reader, avidly pore over and ponder critically over what I have written and I am still writing, discursively speaking, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, the 86-year-old immediate younger brother of former President Agyekum-Kufuor and Ghana’s third-longest serving Minister of Defense, both of whom had been publicly and virulently accused by the late Mr. Harona (or Haruna) Esseku, the Agyekum-Kufuor-deposed extant National Chairman of the then-ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), of having literally and shamelessly converted the Osu Castle, at time, Ghana’s Presidential Palace and Seat-of-Governance, into a Party-Dues Collection Depot; as of this writing, it significant to note that Dr. Addo-Kufuor is also reliably reckoned to be the Second-Richest Ghanaian Citizen to-date. Now, do we need to be told how the Corruption-Baptizing former President Agyekum-Kufuor and his brother Dr. Addo-Kufuor made the overwhelming bulk of their loot?

Well according AI-sourced data, Dr. Addo-Kufuor’s wealth was largely amassed from brokering defense contracts on behalf of his elder brother’s government over the protracted course of a decade, during which period Dr. Addo-Kufuor also doubled as Ghana’s Minister of the Interior. Have any of our legion self-preening “Patriots” ever bothered to figure out the “Vetted Wealth” of Dr. Addo-Kufuor just before this relatively renowned Oxbridge-educated pediatrician assumed the preceding two major portfolios in his elder brother’s two-term government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP)?

In other words, what Ghanaians are most direly in need of presently is Governance Accountability and Fiscal Discipline, not how long or short any democratically elected political party wields the reins of governance. Obviously, the latter observation and utmost concern of the General Ghanaian Public and the Citizenry is not the least bit among the major worries of the soon-to-be 88 years old former President.

On the latter count, as well, it is of signal significance for Ghanaians the bulk of whose Fourth-Republican Constitution is squarely predicated on the 250-year-old Constitution of the United States of America, to studiously and sedulously recognize the fact that the electoral term and the mandate of a US Congressional Representative, the functional equivalent of a Parliamentarian In Ghana, is a measly two years. And yet, America’s Congressional Representatives work with a lightning speed of efficiency that makes their counterparts in Ghana appear to be living in the primitive age of Stonehenge.

Now, let an intellectually phlegmatic and a psychologically comatose Nana Kofi Diawuo Agyekum-Kufuor wax senile and contumely about the fourth year of a four-year presidential and a parliamentary term’s being “maddeningly” devoted to electioneering campaigns. How embarrassingly pathetic. Now, this is precisely where the serious adult matter of “efficient leadership” comes to the very forefront of our national political culture. Which, if memory serves Yours Truly accurately, was opportunely raised at the very beginning of the establishment of the Henry Kwasi (Agyeman-) Prempeh-Chaired and the John Dramani Mahama-inaugurated Constitution Review Commission/Committee sometime early this year.

As this author vividly recalls, Professor Kwasi Prempeh counseled the Mahama Government on the imperative necessity for Ghana’s Faux-British System of coupling ministerial portfolios with parliamentary representation - two decidedly fulltime jobs - to be promptly over and done with. In other words, to thoroughly and completely streamline and enhance the legislative and executive branch of our three-pronged system of democratic governance, particularly vis-a-vis the Separation of Powers, Absolutely No Ministerial Appointments Must Be Made From Among Our Legititately Elected Members of Parliament and Vice Versa. This is to ensure that both the Legislative and the Executive Branches of Government will become fulltime and fully-salaried jobs in their own rights, and not be subject to the sort of remunerative corruption and parasitism that presently exists, in which parliamentarians who also double as cabinet appointees are capriciously apportioned “Ministerial Allowances,” a patently unsavory and a fiscally corrupt practice that in the recent past has needlessly resulted in dozens of our “double-dipping” Parliamentarian-Ministers being literally caught with their proverbial pants down, hung and all.

This bizarre practice inexcusably reflects the mindset and the moral temperament of the shyster and the kleptocratic men and women, from all sections and sectors of Ghanaian Society who formulated and/or crafted Ghana’s 1992 “Klepto-Republican Constitution.” The former President’s argument for the extension of the current Presidential and Parliamentary terms and mandates of office from four to five years, thoroughly and inexcusably lacks practical common sense, because it lamely and facilely assumes Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution to have been created to primarily and exclusively serve the especial and the parochial and the selfish interest of our politicians and our parliamentarians, and not the unarguably superior and the greater interests of the entire nation at large.

You see, any President-In-Waiting who sits in the arid margins of the opposition completely bereft of any Ready-Made or Any Viable and a Comprehensively Prepared National Development and Governance Agenda, in decidedly obtuse hopes of spending most of their first year in office or government merely training their ministerial and cabinet appointees on how to manage the fortunes, affairs and the destiny of their people must be literally living in a Fool’s Paradise.

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