Show Me Your Friend, Jerry John!

Following revelation by the Nigerian media website Pointblanknews.com that the founding patriarch of Ghana's ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) served as a conduit for the illegal transfer of the whopping amount of $ 3.5 million into the NDC's electioneering campaign chest, an aide to Ghana's longest-reigning dictator has been doing the rounds of radio stations, sneeringly denying the allegation as pure “baloney”(See “Ex-President Rawlings Received No River State Cash – Aide” MyJoyOnline.com 6/22/09).

The obvious problem with such denial is that it is abjectly hollow and lacks the same credibility that Mr. Rawlings' initial denial of the 1982 brutal assassination of the three Ghanaian Supreme Court judges was forensically discovered to lack. In the latter instance, the independent Special Investigations Board (SIB), composed of leading Ghanaian judicial and legal lights, concluded that, indeed, then-Chairman Rawlings had been complicit in the assassination of Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Sarkodie and Agyepong; and also that, indeed, Mr. Rawlings' National Security Adviser, Mr. Kojo Tsikata had been in the know, as it were, from the get-go.

What was more, the key to the vehicle used in abducting the judges – all three of them of Akan ethnicity – had been collected from a kitchen table in the Rawlingses' residence by the goon squad, nearly all of them of Ewe extraction.

It is, however, quite refreshing that this time the Rawlings minion, Mr. Kofi Adams, has readily acknowledged that, indeed, Gov. Rotimi Amaechi, of Nigeria's Rivers State, the man who forked up the alleged $ 3.5 million campaign “contribution” to the NDC, and Mr. Rawlings are fast friends. Mr. Adams, in defense of his overlord, also confessed that three months before Ghana's most recent general election, the Dzelukope Mafia capo was in Rivers State giving a public lecture with an unspecified theme, at the invitation of Gov. Amaechi, knowing full well that his best friend and governor of Rivers State was under investigation for money laundering by that country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

And here again, we reiterate the fact that this is not the very first time that Ghana's bloodiest dictator has been associated with a corrupt Nigerian political bigwig. In the 1990s, Mr. Rawlings had to vigorously fight off charges of him having collected up to $ 5 million in payolas from Gen. Sani Abacha, whose blotchy human rights record, including the hanging execution of playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, Mr. Rawlings had spiritedly defended before an august assembly of the United Nations.

Then in 2004, the now-President John Evans Atta-Mills, then on a presidential campaign tour of the country, reported of his visiting Nigerian guests having been assaulted and robbed of several hundred-thousand dollars, as well as other assorted currency notes and some valuable personal effects.

Our simple logical argument here is that such coincidences are too contextually striking to lightly wave off. What is even more significant here is not the possible flouting of the Ghanaian Constitution by Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills, as our Fourth-Republican Constitution states in no uncertain terms that the solicitation of campaign contributions from non-Ghanaian citizens and other foreign sources is tantamount to a flagrant breach of our country's sovereignty, but the bold and patriotic willingness of well-meaning Ghanaians to ensure that such allegations are promptly and thoroughly investigated and, where any wrongdoing is observed to have occurred, appropriately sanctioned.

In other words, how prepared are Ghanaian security, legal and judicial trustees to vigorously pursue these treasonable matters without the inimical and unsavory interference of fear and/or favor? This is precisely where the significance of such allegations lies; else, they may just as well have been culled from the dramaturgical fare of the likes of Efua Sutherland, J. C. DeGraft and Martin Owusu.

In essence, what we are boldly and patriotically suggesting here is that once it is forensically established by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that, indeed, the NDC and its founding overlord have willfully collaborated with some foreign operatives to grievously undermine Ghana's sovereignty, the real REVOLUTION ought to begin – for what is good for Yaw Boakye, Kwasi Afrifa, Acheampong, Akuffo and Utuka (and the list goes on and on and on…) must also be good for the likes of Messrs. Rawlings, Atta-Mills and their fellow “revolutionary” journeymen and women.

When I speak of Ghana, even as Dr. J. B. Danquah may well have said, I speak of Freedom, Justice and Fair-play!

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*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 20 books, including “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

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