Don’t Advertise Your Ignorance, Mr. Biakoye!

I read Mr. Biakoye's article titled “Akufo-Addo Confesses: 'I Have No Public Service Record,'” with the kind of amusement that convulses one who encounters a certified clown presuming to play the cerebral role of a philosopher. Other than the author's gratuitous insults against Ghana's presumptive next President, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, there wasn't much to make of the thrust of the largely desultory article, other than the writer's pathetically ineffectual attempt to hold brief for the perennial presidential candidate of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC). And on the latter score, need we highlight the fact of Mr. Spio Garbrah, perhaps the finest presidential material in the political arsenal of the Rawlings Corporation, having persistently and consistently and accurately described Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills as “a twice-rejected product” who can best be described as a permanently and irreparably damaged commodity? (Ghanaweb.com 9/26/06).

And I can unreservedly bet my proverbial bottom-dollar that Mr. Spio Garbrah is far better qualified than Mr. Biakoye to make any judgment call on the Axim-to-Paga trotting Prof. Atta-Mills. And so besides shamelessly advertising his abject ignorance, where does Mr. Biakoye's article get the writer?

For starters, the article points to the fact that not very many intelligent Ghanaians support the P/NDC flagbearer. Else, the author would not be so pathetically, albeit presumptuously, and fatuously be confusing Nana Akufo-Addo's heartfelt sympathy for the perennially underpaid Ghanaian teacher, in particular, and civil servant in general, with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential Candidate supposedly being morbidly afraid of “public service.” And here must also be recalled the fact that long before his father, President Edward Akufo-Addo, became a Ghanaian Supreme Court justice, the Akuapem-Aburi and Akropong native had been a Presbyterian schoolteacher. And so it is not as if the NPP Presidential Candidate has absolutely no clue about what it means to be a woefully underpaid civil servant; and, here, it goes without saying this scandalous economic status of the average Ghanaian civil servant may well have motivated the Akufo-Addos to admirably better themselves the way and manner that father-and-son were to do.

And now, regarding the latter label, it gets even messier, for Mr. Biakoye does not even seem to appreciably know the difference between “civil service” and “public service,” particularly the semiotic and ideological implications of being a “civil servant,” as opposed to being a “public servant” in political parlance. Indeed, while the two terms are quite close in definition, they are not necessarily and invariably fungible or mutually interchangeable. In essence, we often speak of “public service” in charitable terms. In other words, people, ordinarily, go into “public service” out of the kindliness of their hearts, rather than the primary human and purely visceral desire of making a good living for themselves, as it were. Thus when Nana Akufo-Addo, for example, decided to enter into national politics, he did so knowing fully well that he was going to earn far less, in terms of salary and economic comfort than ever before. And it is also rather pedestrian to highlight the quite well-known fact that until he entered the “public service” arena of both the Ghanaian parliament and the government of the ruling New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo was unarguably one of the most economically successful Ghanaian private legal practitioners, having also employed quite a number of other lawyers in his chambers, and thus paid much higher taxes to the state than both Messrs. Atta-Mills and Rawlings, for example. Thus when he talks of creating jobs for both the unemployed and the woefully underemployed, unlike Prof. Atta-Mills, Nana Akufo-Addo knows exactly what he is talking about.

But even more significantly, for the NPP-MP for Abuakwa-South, serving in government was never a route to money-making but to actually serve the interests of Ghanaian citizens and residents at large. And on the preceding score, I dare Mr. Biakoye to make the same case, or claim, for Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills. At best such case, in favor of the former Legon Law-School faculty member, is bound to be purely speculative. For it is glaringly obvious that Prof. Atta-Mills left his woefully underpaid Legon job in order to receive considerably higher salaries, as both Vice-President to Mr. Rawlings, and before that as Ghana's bumbling Tax Commissioner, and a sports executive before the latter. And so for Prof. Atta-Mills, going into “public service” was primarily an economic bonanza or a “Ghanaian Dream Come True.” Thus in terms of who is more likely to rapaciously plunder the recently discovered oil-wealth of Ghana, should he be accorded the sacred mandate of the electorate, we promptly, objectively and incontrovertibly know that that “prospective kleptocrat” is none other than the so-called Asomdwoehene (Prince-of-Peace). And just why do we say this? Simply because when the opportunity struck, on the cheap, Prof. Atta-Mills, it was, who, literally, scurried out of the august hallways of Ghana's flagship academy, the University of Ghana, his own alma mater, and never looked back!

Nana Akufo-Addo, on the other hand, made a good living for his family and himself and then altruistically and voluntarily decided to work for the common good of the Ghanaian people by going into public service. And just exactly what could be more professionally admirable? We leave the rest to the creative judgment of the reader. Still, it goes without saying that this is totally no accident, for unlike Prof. Atta-Mills, Nana Akufo-Addo has an enviable, indigenous Ghanaian pedigree going back more than two centuries, including having had an Oxford-educated Mathematical-Philosophy maven of a father who was once President of Ghana, a Justice of the Ghanaian Supreme Court and a distinguished educator before the preceding, as well as a college-educated mother who was debriefed by the celebrated Watson Commission that paved the way for Ghana's independence.

Interestingly and all too predictably, like his protégé, Prof. Atta-Mills, Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John “Every Lizard Can Be President of Ghana” Rawlings went into “public service,” via the bloody barrel of an AK-47, in order to plunder our national coffers, even while self-righteously preaching probity and accountability to a hostage populace.

And so what do the following remarks from Mr. Biakoye really mean?: “If Ghanaians allow [expletive] Akufo-Addo to become president of Ghana, we will all die in this country. For a person who has admitted that he cannot survive on public service salary[,] can you imagine the extent to which [expletive] Akufo-Addo will go to get extra money to live like and[sic] Arabian King if we make a mistake and allow him to misgovern the country? Can you imagine the extent to which the drug trade will be made to flourish so [expletive] Akufo-Addo can [sic] make lots of money?”

First of all, anybody who really believes, like Mr. Biakoye, that the 20 years that Ghanaians languished under Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills constituted a “Golden Age” in postcolonial Ghanaian history, ought to promptly seek medical help at Ankaful. Secondly, where does Mr. Biakoye expect to live and die, whether Nana Akufo-Addo is elected President or not? Thirdly, why would Nana Akufo-Addo have to “live like and[sic] Arabian King” when he is already THE DIAMOND PRINCE OF GHANA? And finally, who granted the Colombian cocaine kingpin asylum and professional protection at East Legon, but Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills? And just who were the Colombian drug lord's legal advisers and pimps, but the entire National Executive Committee of the Provisional National Democratic Congress (NEC of P/NDC)?

Now, talking of “failures,” “Nana” Biakoye sounds like one of those Yor-Ke-Gari crediting malcontents who think that every successful Ghanaian citizen is to blame for their total lack of success, except themselves.

*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 “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].