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09.09.2008 Feature Article

Chances Are That…

Chances Are That
09.09.2008 LISTEN

If you cannot correctly spell the name of “Barack” Obama, and instead you choose to spell the first name of the Presidential Candidate of the U.S. Democratic Party with a double “r,” as in Dodan Barracks, then chances are that you, definitely, must be Mr. Koku Anyidoho, the semi-literate propaganda director of Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, perennially bumbling flagbearer of the so-called National Democratic Congress (see “Eight Years of Moving Backwards Is Enough!” Ghanaweb.com 9/1/08). You are also so desperately itching to be handed the reins of governance that you readily and deliberately forget the stark reality of the fact that you cannot accurately spell the first name of Mr. “Barack” Obama, because you have wasted the better part of your adult life genuflecting before a brutal military dictator rather than hitting the books, thus your woeful inability to differentiate between “Barack,” meaning “one who is blessed of/by God” and “Barrack(s),” a residential quarters for professionally trained soldiers.

And if you also had to guzzle gallons of Libyan coffee to keep your mind alert and eyes wide awake while listening to Mr. Obama deliver his presidential nomination acceptance speech, then, perhaps, you had better submit at least a cup of your coffee for forensic examination, to determine if was not, indeed, laced with a portion of the missing Colombian cocaine contraband from the Ghana Police Headquarters. For the last time that we heard about it, top-notch members of the Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) were guarding the East-Legon palace of a wanted Colombian drug kingpin.

And if, indeed, you sincerely believe that Dr. John Evans Atta-Mills is “a learned professor,” then you had better ask him why the former Legon law school lecturer never taught you how to correctly spell the name of Mr. “Barack” Obama.

Indeed, Senator Obama continues to fully live out the “Dream” of the immortalized Civil Rights spearhead Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by the day; but, Efo Kokuvi, can your boss, Prof. Atta-Mills, legitimately make a similar claim, having callously presided over the total collapse of the Ghanaian educational system which has now, tragically, ensured that you will never be able to correctly spell the first name of Mr. “Barack” Obama? Then again, whoever heard of “a learned professor” who gladly and readily consented to playing second-bananas to a ruthless military dictator who barely graduated high school? Huh, what kind of “learned professor” sets his leadership standards so abysmally low?

Nyebro Koku Anyidoho, and did you possess the desired common sense so as to enable you to pause for even a nanosecond, once you uttered these inexorably suicidal words: “For me, what really hit home hard, was the bit about America having had enough of the maladministration of cowboy George W. Bush, and that, eight years of Republicans and their anti-people policies is enough”? To be certain, Efo Kokuvi, Mr. Obama was eerily alluding to the Ghanaian equivalent of the U.S. Republican Party. In Ghana, in case you do not know, the GOP's identical twin-brother is your so-called National Democratic Congress. But, of course, being as clinically daft and hard of hearing as you are, this, too, was lost on you. I don't know the exact expression in Ewe, since I don't speak your mother tongue, but among us Akan, there is a saying that: “It is only the fool who says this particular piece of advice is meant for my neighbor, not for me.”

And just what do you think Mr. Obama meant by eight years of “anti-people policies” being enough? If your dead-desperation for power has also blunted your capacity for common sense, then let me do you this critical favor, you would thank me to no end, twenty years from now. Efo Kokuvi, Mr. Obama was talking about the Cash-and-Carry policy of the P/NDC government. For realistically speaking, the Democratic Party's presidential candidate is far too nimble to mistake the New Patriotic Party's National Health Insurance Scheme, and its concomitant pre-natal care for all pregnant Ghanaian women, gratis, for an anti-people policy. Do you hear that loud and clear? I suppose in your Ewe-language, the word is “Esia” or “Esea” isn't it?

Efo Kokuvi, it is, indeed, not your fault, so I won't presume to hold it too much against you; I am just mildly annoyed with your fanaticism. You see, fanatics like you invariably have no brains and minds of their own – so from time to time, it takes levelheaded Diaspora Ghanaians like me to infuse a remarkable dosage of common sense into your clinically addled skull. The so-called PNDC Law 111 is called “Intestate Succession Law,” and it is aimed at protecting the spouses and children of resourceful Ghanaians who expire without having composed a will, regarding the disposition of their wealth among kin and significant others. So why have you capriciously decided to brand it as “Interstate” Succession Law? Really, PNDC Law 111 has absolutely nothing to do with cross-border commercial transactions between Ghanaians and Togolese, for example, as you loudly and shamelessly seem to be implying. And do you, by now, fully appreciate the fact that it is your woeful mis-education by the “learned professor” that has caused you to so unnecessarily and foolishly embarrass yourself before the world this early Monday morning?

Efo Kokuvi, are you also the only Ghanaian who is crassly ignorant of the putative fact of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah having staunchly served as a KGB agent and Station Director for West Africa? And just what do you suppose the Show Boy's bestowal of the 1961 LENIN PRIZE by the Russian ambassador to Ghana was about, but congratulatory kudos for a job well executed? Or you have also so soon forgotten that it was during this presentation that the outlines of Dr. Danquah's brutal assassination at Nsawam was fully laid out? And so would you kindly cut this crap about the Danquah-Busia Tradition having “truncated” the “forward march” of Nkrumaism before I punch a civil war through the right socket of your eyes? Huh, Koku, just what do you suppose Nkrumaism to have been about, but a fascist and pseudo-socialist ideology pathologically and shamelessly fashioned around Nkrumah's apotheosis?

And, by the way, why not settle for a one-party state, under the watch of President Kufuor if you are, indeed, such a proud and diehard Nkrumaist and you sincerely believe that the CPP government was the most democratic in postcolonial Ghanaian history, rather than bestially attempting to claw your way into the Flagstaff House? Are twenty marathon years of lording it extortionately over an ill-informed and unsuspecting Ghanaian citizenry from Mr. Rawlings's father's old slave Castle, at Osu, not enough of untold crimes against humanity? You just wait and see; one of these days, Efo, we shall bundle up your so-called “Asomdwoehene” and his “Master Red” and dump your ossified butts before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. You better thank your stars that your cousin Tsatsu Tsikata, the notorious butcher's accomplice, was lucky enough to have been duly and fairly tried, convicted and sentenced to a piddling 5-year's imprisonment at the Kwame Nkrumah Holiday Inn at Nsawam. And haven't you noticed that almost no criminal convict returns from The Hague alive? And you better stop screaming like a dumb blonde before I punch your puffy Akple lips to pulp!

*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 18 books, including “Reena: Letters to an Indian Gal” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].

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