Kufuor Discredits the Danquah-Busia Tradition

He started out on an auspicious note, after a longsuffering Ghanaian electorate, largely fed-up with the extortionate maladministration of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), overwhelmingly voted the then-parliamentary opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) into the august seat of governance. The P/NDC had, by 2001, ridden roughshod over unsuspecting and well-meaning Ghanaians for some two marathon and unremittingly bloody decades. Still, the newly-elected president, Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor's first administrative move was a big blunder; for the new Chief-Executive-of-State had mistaken the mandate accorded the New Patriotic Party to be one that was personal, rather than a collective ideological mandate that, finally, legitimized the salutary free-market political agenda unflappably promoted by the followers of Drs. J. B. Danquah and K. A. Busia.

Consequently, his first order of business as President of an authentically democratic Ghana in 2001, saw Mr. Kufuor naming his immediate younger brother, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, a notable Kumasi pediatrician, as Ghana's Minister of Defense. Back then, this writer vehemently decried the elder Mr. Kufuor's blatantly nepotistic attempt to domesticate a purely national political affair. For some of his staunch supporters, however, such move could not have been more ideal, or perfect, because these backers saw Dr. Addo-Kufuor's professionally incongruous appointment in terms of trust and fidelity. The fact that Mr. Rawlings has had a fellow Ewe clansman for his National Security Coordinator, in the person of Capt. Kojo Tsikata, seemed to solidly clinch the validity of Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor's appointment. Having thus thoroughly corrupted the caliber of his government, notwithstanding the fact of Dr. Addo-Kufuor having creditably acquitted himself at his Defense Minister's post (some of us had expected that his elder brother would name him Health Minister), the President had no other alternative but to continue to run the Danquah-Busia agenda on a downward spiral, morally speaking, that is. In sum, raw nepotism became the proverbial order of the day where, in the case of the former ruling P/NDC, a deft combination of brazen nepotism and populism had prevailed.

Alas, like the typical Ghanaian politician that he incurably has demonstrated himself to be, the Oxbridge-schooled Mr. Kufuor has persistently and consistently prioritized the reaping of quick and immediate rewards, however undeserved, over exemplary sacrifice and astute statesmanship. In brief, it was quite obvious from the beginning of his administration that while, indeed, civil liberties were bound to be admirably guaranteed and even protected to a hitherto unprecedented extent, the proverbially blind and impartial administration of the rule of law and order would be severely blighted, even compromised, in more than several instances. The sad irony of the fact of Mr. Kufuor's presidency inheres in its patently pedestrian predictability; for the fact remains depressingly incontrovertible that since 1957, Ghana has been largely ruled by “politicians,” be they uniformed or mufti-attired, military or civilian, rather than “statesmen.” This means that contrary to what many of us had been led to believe on the eve of the New Patriotic Party's accession to the democratic exercise of power, Ghana has yet to be governed (not ruled) by a statesman (with the possible exception of Dr. K. A. Busia, of course). And, alas, so far, except for the amply demonstrated statesmanship of Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, as globally witnessed (by media giants like The New York Times) in the NPP Presidential Candidate's human-rights activism, none of the other presidential candidates for Election 2008 appears to have exhibited any remarkable modicum of sustained statesmanship, except abject opportunism and sheer political expediency. On the preceding score, therefore, an oil-rich Ghana appears to be eerily poised on the cusp of anomie and decadence.

While indeed, for the most part, his tenure has registered a remarkable improvement in the economic strength and general development of Ghana, nonetheless, his widely remarked penchant for ceremonial profligacy has ensured that much of such salutary gains would be largely unfelt by the bulk of the Ghanaian citizenry. Of course, we must also candidly recognize the fact that matters have not been, in the least bit, meliorated by a raging global recession.

The preceding notwithstanding, Mr. Kufuor's curious decision to bestow some 244 Ghanaians and foreigners – and the list balloons by the day – with a wide range of national-merit orders must not be allowed to pass without remark. The bestowal of these awards themselves is not the issue at stake here; at issue here are the criteria upon which the selection of recipients for these awards is predicated. Many observers and critics have not noticed it as yet, because his name has been deliberately buried far down the bottom of the list of awardees, but Capt. Kojo Tsikata, with his military title conveniently removed and only blandly acknowledged as “Mr.” Kojo Tsikata, appears on President Kufuor's honors list. We must also promptly highlight the fact that just as we were putting finishing touches to this article (6/23/08), Capt. Kojo Tsikata released a tersely-worded statement, via the Ghana News Agency (GNA), in which the notorious National Security Coordinator of the extortionate and sanguinary government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), caustically questioned both the sanity and personal integrity of President Kufuor and his panel of merit-award operatives. To the foregoing effect, Capt. Tsikata observed:

“I have now learnt that my name is on a list of persons on whom national honors are to be conferred. I cannot fathom the mental processes that led to my name being put on the list. ¶ Let me put it beyond doubt that I will not accept any honors from President John Agyekum Kufuor or any of his cronies who have blatantly and cynically engaged in a systematic manipulation of the judicial process” (see “Kojo Tsikata Rejects National Honor” Ghanaweb.com 6/23/08).

Of course, the foregoing reference to the purported “manipulation of the judicial process” regards the recent sentencing of the award nominee's younger cousin and bosom friend, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, to a long-overdue 5-year prison term, for causing financial loss to the government and people of Ghana. It is rather ironic, albeit all too predictable, that President Kufuor would so readily and cheaply cede the proverbial high moral ground of our national conscience to Capt. Kojo Tsikata, the impenitent Butcher-of-Anlo. As our elders have since long observed, “An unruly goat once stood in the middle of the marketplace, one leg up and busily defecating, presuming to be destroying the entire community, but only to belatedly realize, to his utter horror and disappointment that, in fact, he was actually dishonoring himself.”

Then you also have Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Minister-without-Portfolio and the man whose main claim to fame is the fact of him having authored a badly written and edited biography of Mr. Kufuor; the book has since been thoroughly revised and re-edited into a second edition, which was launched in Accra, to great fanfare, not quite long ago by Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Literature (Prize) Laureate. Mr. Agyeman-Duah also collaborated with a Harvard University professor, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in the filming of the $ 10 million continental Africa-denigrating documentary titled “Wonders of the African World” (see also Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe's The New Scapegoats), in which Professor Gates cynically and cavalierly described the Asante Empire, among several civilized West-African cultures, as a damnable “Slave Civilization.” For Professor Gates, therefore, the Asante people, among others, ought to be squarely held responsible for the massive enslavement of African-Americans, and thus the imperative need for reparations-seeking Diaspora Africans to direct their grievances towards continental Africans, rather than Western European slavers and imperialists. We must also, here, highlight the fact that it was Mr. Agyeman-Duah's biography on Mr. Kufuor, titled Between Faith and History, which venomously spouted the Asante-Akyem myth of sustained postcolonial political animus, which has been deviously converted into prime political grist by the flame-fanning likes of Alhaji Harruna Attah, publisher of the Accra Daily Mail.

Ultimately, what is at issue here is the hefty monetary expenditure involved in both the order placement for the manufacture and ceremonial presentation of these national merit awards, coming right on the heels of Ghana's half-centennial independence anniversary celebrations, on which the reportedly humongous sum of $ 50 million (Fifty-Million Dollars) was expended. Likewise, Mr. Kufuor's eleventh-hour decision to create a merit-award category for which only the creator and his supposedly longtime arch-nemesis, the swashbuckling Chairman Rawlings, qualify.

There is a quite refreshing edge to this whole Kufuor circus, in the form of the creation of something called The Order of the Star of Ghana, Companion Division, which, although solely and originally meant for Vice-Presidents, could also now be awarded to “such personalities, nationals or foreigners [as might be adjudged to be deserving].” Of course, we are in no way blind to the grim fact of this new amendment being directly linked to the recent national NPP rank-and-file backlash that greeted the Office of the Presidency, when it glaringly appeared that Mr. Kufuor had decided to use the occasion for this award to both publicly slight and get back at the Presidential Candidate of his own ruling New Patriotic Party, for whatever capricious reason(s).

Still, if I were Nana Akufo-Addo, I would stay as far away as possible from the Accra International Conference Center, the venue slated for the awards, come July 3, 2008, in order not only to wisely break ranks with Mr. Kufuor's inordinate penchant for elitist cronyism but, even more significantly, to demonstrate his widely acknowledged solidarity with hardworking and woefully unrecognized ordinary Ghanaians.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Romantic Explorations” and “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].