Ghanaian Voters Must Take Note!

This is about the third or fourth time that we are exhorting the members, supporters and sympathizers of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to be fully prepared to engage the belligerent thugs of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) in a possible full-scale war, in the certain event of the P/NDC losing the general election slated for December 2008.

We also stressed the need for the NPP to institute what may aptly be described as either a counter-terror agency, with the latter's membership fully-armed with state-of-the-art military equipment and technology in order to fully confront and ruthlessly deal with the perennial P/NDC culture of violence and intimidation. Or, for purely diplomatic purposes, the proposed counter-terror agency could be called the National Peacekeeping Agency, a kind of well-disciplined paramilitary agency with complementary powers to both the Ghana Armed Forces as well as the Ghana Police Service.

And here, it may be recalled that the first of such calls was made in the wake of the P/NDC's public pledge to conflagrate the country, in the certain event of the main parliamentary opposition party losing its gratuitous and outrageous bid to regaining Ghana's reins of governance, at Somanya last June. During the latter date, June 4, to be exact, the NDC, led by its sole proprietor, Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings, defied both parliamentary and judicial proscription and went ahead with the pseudo-revolutionary party's celebration of its so-called June 4th Revolution.

Now, what the preceding simply and plainly means is that even in opposition, the Provisional National Democratic Congress has emphatically indicated its immutable intention of summarily reducing Ghana to rubbles, should the electorate legitimately and intelligently decide not to return the most violent faux-political party in postcolonial Ghana to power.

As we promptly observed then, in a more disciplined democratic dispensation, the vanguard leaders of the June 4 criminal breach of the legitimate laws of the land would have promptly been arraigned before a court of law to answer charges pertaining to their willful disruption of public law and order, as well as outright sedition. Unfortunately, however, our call, predictably, was not heeded. Maybe, this was also another woefully miscalculated conciliatory gesture on the part of the Kufuor Administration.

On Friday, March 28, 2008, leaders of the opposition Provisional National Democratic Congress, once again, went on the rampage; this time, they attempted to cause mayhem to the body and person of the Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party and Member of Parliament for Abuakwa-South, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo. But for the quite admirable vigilance of his body guards, Nana Akufo-Addo would, at a minimum, have ended up in the hospital; at the worst, he may well have been summarily and totally incapacitated in order for the P/NDC thuggocrats to opportunely achieve their aim of permanently derailing the fledgling and salutary democratic culture of the Ghanaian people.

On March 28, 2008, we are told that the national Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Shaributu, had separately and at different times invited the flagbearers and supporters of both the New Patriotic Party and the so-called National Democratic Congress to join Sheikh Shaributu in celebrating “Maulid,” the Islamic holiday commemorating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. And as Accra's Joy-Fm radio retailed the story, the P/NDC candidate for president, Professor John Evans Atta-Mills, and his supporters were the first to pay their courtesy call on Sheikh Shaributu and to be promptly welcomed and seen off by the Chief Imam.

Alas, unbeknownst to both the Chief Imam and the NPP Presidential Candidate and the latter's supporters, Professor Atta-Mills and his cohorts had also planned, well in advance, to desecrate the memory of the Prophet Muhammad by launching both a verbal and physical assault on the subsequently arriving members of the New Patriotic Party.

It is quite “fascinating” that the P/NDC operatives had decided to deftly ambush Nana Akufo-Addo and his supporters by supposedly holding a rally at the P/NDC's district office in Fadama, located at just a stone's throw from the residence of Sheikh Shaributu. The apparent and obvious intent here was to wait until the quite busy street at the forecourt of the Imam's residence was packed with vehicles belonging to Nana Akufo-Addo's entourage, thereby using the rather routine blockage of the street to launch the only process by which Professor Atta-Mills and his hired thugs believe they may be able to regain Ghana's reins of governance.

Indeed, it is rather ironic, albeit all too predictable, that the members of Professor Atta-Mills' entourage would also claim that they wanted to clear Nana Akufo-Addo's retinue from the same space that had been blocked by the Atta-Mills faction, in turn, a few hours before, in order for the P/NDC flagbearer and his hirelings to get to the Abossey Okai Central Mosque to worship Allah, all in the very name of the Prophet Muhammad!

We, of course, hope that potential Ghanaian voters are also taking a good note of the fact of Professor Atta-Mills' sacrilegious attempt to bring Islam into abject disrepute, by stereotypically attempting to shamelessly link the latter major and venerable religion with the radically violent likes of Al Qaeda.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 13 books, including “Abe: Reflections on Love” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008), his 10th volume of poetry. E-mail: [email protected].