P. C. Appiah Ofori Is No Paa Willie!

Mr. William (Paa Willie) Ofori-Atta

During Ghana's First Republic, Mr. William (Paa Willie) Ofori-Atta was widely regarded as the conscience of the parliamentary opposition to the extant ruling Convention People's Party (CPP). Back then, as this writer's late father, a staunch CPP member and sometime Action Trooper, was fond of telling his younger son and namesake, Mr. William Ofori-Atta would often be seen and heard admonishing his fellow opposition parliamentarians against the rather facile and downright sophomoric practice of parliamentary boycotts. Even envisaging the overwhelming odds stacked in favor of the CPP, Paa Willie would, instead, counsel that members of the United Party (UP) actively participate in unpopular parliamentary proceedings in order to have the same entered in the record books of the day for the salutary benefit of posterity and the development of Ghanaian democracy. For the foregoing reason, even President Nkrumah was believed to hold the Akyem-Abuakwa parliamentarian in very high regard.

Needless to say, the main objective of this narrative, on my father's part was, of course, to highlight the exemplary statesmanship of his maternal uncle and the legendary member of the celebrated “Big Six.”

Today, this kind of enviable statesmanship is sorely lacking in postcolonial Ghanaian politics, especially Fourth-Republican Ghanaian politics. For instance, in the wake of his presidential election defeat in 1992, the late Prof. Albert A. A. Boahen was to rather selfishly call for an electoral boycott by the then-opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) of the first parliamentary election of Ghana's Fourth Republic. The visionless result was that the unarguably mischief-making National Democratic Congress (NDC) was effectively and unwisely handed both the executive and legislative branches of the Ghana government on a diamond platter. It would be another eight years before the NPP gained the democratic reins of governance, and twenty years since the military overthrow of the Busia-led Progress Party (PP).

The situation has not been any better, or different, when the Ghanaian electorate has sent the narcissistic and smug National Democratic Congress packing back into the functional margins of the parliamentary opposition. Consequently, it came as scarcely any surprise that the NDC had spent the preceding eight years in the lead-up to Election 2008 engaged in unsavory and incessant parliamentary boycotts, even while also demanding and, in fact, receiving the full salaries constitutionally stipulated for members of the Ghanaian parliament. And regarding the latter, we have yet to hear from the Atta-Mills government as to whether the NDC intends to set up a judicially binding commission of inquiry into the willful and deliberate causing of avoidable financial loss to the State by reckless and irresponsible Ghanaian parliamentarians. Needless to say, on this score, I am not holding my breath.

Naturally, in the gaping and traumatic absence of the kind of sterling statesmanship epitomized by the immortalized Mr. William (Paa Willie) Ofori-Atta, we now have the rather erratic and vacuous “statesmanship” pathetically represented by Mr. P. C. Appiah Ofori, the NPP-MP for the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa constituency of the Central Region. Mr. Appiah Ofori has rapidly and fiercely, if also at times bizarrely, transformed himself into a kind of “whistle-blowing” crusader among the ranks of the NPP parliamentarians. And while he may not always be perceived to be a team-playing hack of the familiarly cynical breed, nonetheless, the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa MP offers the kind of soul-searching approach to democratic political culture that has yet to be experienced by the Ghanaian electorate to any remarkable extent. Increasingly, it is becoming eerily and blisteringly evident that attitude-wise, there is fundamentally no difference, whatsoever, between the parliamentary membership of both the ruling National Democratic Congress and the opposition New Patriotic Party.

Recently, for instance, there was a rumor making the rounds regarding the purported desire of the executive membership of the NPP to changing the name of the party. And on the latter score, it is worthwhile pointing out that no amount or number of re-christening is apt to render the NPP political machinery any better than it currently is, short of the radical change in attitude on the part of the human operators and operatives of the NPP.

At any rate, our especial concern here regards a recent editorial that appeared on Ghanaweb.com which was sourced to the Ghanaian Statesman. Captioned “P. C. Appiah Ofori Must Prove or Resign” (7/7/09), the editorial reported the parliamentary walkout of the NPP-MPs while a crucial debate on a $ 535 million World Bank loan was in progress. Naturally, proceedings had to be halted for the lack of quorum. What is interesting about the walkout, however, was the motive behind it. And you guessed right: The notorious Mr. P. C. Appiah Ofori had trotted to the media and gauchely burped an outrageous accusation about NPP-MPs having allegedly received $ 5,000.00 payolas, per head, from an unspecified “Chief of Staff,” perhaps, ex-President Kufuor's administrative point-man, in order to unreservedly vote in favor of a takeover of 75% shares of the hitherto virtually decrepit and bankrupt Ghana Telecom by the European telecommunications giant Vodafone.

According to the Statesman's editorial, confronted about the veracity of his accusation, Mr. Appiah Ofori “could only mention NDC-MP [and deputy parliamentary speaker] Mr. Doe Adjaho [as the] source [of his mordant accusation].”

There is an age-old Akan maxim which poignantly observes that anytime that one points an accusing finger at another, one's three other fingers point squarely at the self-righteous accuser. In brief, without even first calling on the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa MP to substantiate his allegation, several curious aspects of Mr. Appiah Ofori's character, and even temperament, require prompt examination. For starters, why would the maverick NPP-MP suppose that a shrewdly calculating NDC stalwart like Mr. Adjaho would be privy to an illegal and flagrant contractual deal in which the now-deputy speaker of Ghana's parliament was not involved and apparently played absolutely no active part, unless, of course, Mr. Appiah Ofori is incredibly naïve?

Secondly, if, indeed, as Mr. Adjaho allegedly claims, all the NPP-MPs were approached with vote-influencing payolas in the Vodafone affair, where was the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa MP that such momentous transaction, somehow, escaped his purview and attention altogether?

The fact of the matter is that one does not need an Oxford University, or even a University of Ghana, degree to conclude that after our harrowing experiences with the gross mismanagement of public enterprises by both the erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), the best decision that the Kufuor administration could constructively reach was precisely the one that the NPP government took, which was to offload the Ghana government's majority shares in Ghana Telecom to a willing entrepreneur with a globally proven performance record. This is sheer common sense; and while it should be sorely lacking among the likes of Messrs. Appiah Ofori, Doe Adjaho and the rest of the NDC parliamentary rat-pack beats the sound imagination.

What is also quite interesting and almost amusing, were it not also very serious, is the fact that the largely sentimental and self-righteous likes of Messrs. Appiah Ofori and Adjaho would also pretend to have been in exile when Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills, among a legion of other bumbling cynics literally gave away, gratis, the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC) to “entrepreneurs” of largely dubious and managerially unproven track-records.

*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 also a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy think tank, and the author of 20 books, including “The New Scapegoats: Colored-on-Black Racism” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].

Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com