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Sun, 10 May 2015 Feature Article

The Three Akan Judges Were Not So Lucky, Tsatsu

The Three Akan Judges Were Not So Lucky, Tsatsu

He has the nerve, yes the chutzpah, to declare that he bears no grudge against former President John Agyekum-Kufuor. And all because like the unconscionable and cognitively dissonant rascal that he is, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, the former Managing-Director of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), refuses to squarely and fully appreciate the fact that it was his own gross administrative incompetence, and not any vindictiveness on the part of Mr. Kufuor, that landed him at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison for criminally causing financial loss to the State (See "No Grudge Against Kufuor, Says Tsikata" Daily Guide / Ghanaweb.com 5/7/15).

We must also quickly point out that it was the same Mr. Tsikata who publicly asserted that but for his death on the Condemned-Cell Block at the Nsawam Prison, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah was a patent nonentity in the scheme of the postcolonial history of modern Ghana.

The former University of Ghana Law School lecturer also claims that he maintains a "cordial" relationship with the former president whose New Patriotic Party (NPP) government exacted condign justice from him. Upon close scrutiny, however, it becomes quizzically clear that Mr. Tsikata does not really understand the adjectival word "cordial," for he squarely predicates the latter word on the fact that whenever he encounters Mr. Kufuor in public, he exchanges greetings with the former Popular-Front Party (PFP) Deputy Minority Leader in Parliament and the representative for Atwima-Nwabiagya during Ghana's Third Republic.

And so maybe somebody more conscientious ought to inform Mr. Tsikata that if, indeed, he maintained a "cordial" relationship with Mr. Kufuor, he would have picked up the phone to enquire about his state of health from time to time; but even more significantly, Mr. Tsikata would have personally called on the Kufuor family to wish them well when Mrs. Theresa Kufuor's recent indisposition was intemperately and falsely represented as death by the Ghanaian media. I am, of course, hereby not the least bit suggesting that President Kufuor would have necessarily warmed up to the very idea of a cold-blooded judicial assassinaton mastermind calling up at his house, on the dubious pretext of a goodwill - or courtesy - call without being understandably suspected of being up to some mischief.

In other words, glad-handing the former president is not a genuine demonstration of goodwill; or maybe in Keta, from whence the Tsikatas hail, public glad-handing is a quintessential mark of "cordiality." I also resent this obscene attempt by Mr. Tsikata to wax heroic by comically harping on his flat refusal to accept a presidential pardon from Mr. Kufuor, a noble and goodwill gesture that he clearly did not deserve, knowing fully well that an incurably corrupt Atta-Mills government, which had just narrowly received the nod of the Ghanaian electorate, was apt to release him from Nsawam in no time.

I also don't think, or even believe, for a split-second that Mr. Tsikata learned anything meaningful from his two-day vacation at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison, let alone experience the glorious presence of Divine Providence. Now that is criminally and unconscionably blasphemous! Still, and this is very bizarre for me to have to admit , but Mr. Tsikata is absolutely right to observe that Prof. Attahiru, Nigeria's Electoral Commissioner, learned a lot from Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan's epic bungling of Ghana's 2012 general election. What is a god-send, though, is not Mr. Tsikata's going to the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison to experience providential wisdom and grace, but the fact that his crime-buddy, Dr. Afari-Gyan, will not have another chance to revisit his university-days' envy and jealousy on Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Mr. Tsikata would also do himself and his fellow Ghanaians great good by recalling what the General-Secretary of his own party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had to say about the purported transparency and wholesomeness of Ghana's 2012 presidential election. "Little Dramani cheated!" They call it taking advantage of the lack of vigilance on the part of Akufo-Addo's polling agents and party representatives.

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, © 2015

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, taught Print Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City, for more than 20 years. He is also a former Book Review Editor of The New York Amsterdam News.. More He holds Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) in English, Communications and Africana Studies from The City College of New York of The City University of New York, where he was named a Ford Foundation Undergraduate Fellow and the first recipient of the John J. Reyne Artistic Achievement Award in English Poetry (Creative Writing) in 1988.

The author was part of the "socially revolutionary" team of undergraduate journalists at City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY), who won First-Prize certificates for Best Community Reporting from the Columbia University School of Journalism, for three consecutive years, from 1988 to 1990.

Born April 8, 1963, in Ghana; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Kwame (an educator) and Dorothy (maiden name, Sintim) Okoampa-Ahoofe; children: Abena Aninwaa, Kwame III. Ethnicity: "African." Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1990; Temple University, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1998. Politics: Independent. Religion: "Christian—Ecumenist." Hobbies and other interests: Political philosophy.

CAREER: Ghana National Cultural Center, Kumasi, poet, 1979–84; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, worked as instructor in English; Technical Career Institutes, New York, NY, instructor in English, 1991–94; Indiana State University, Terre Haute, instructor in history, 1994–95; Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY, member of English faculty. Participant in World Bank African "Brain-Gain" pilot project.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, African Studies Association, Community College Humanities Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Essay award, Nassau Review, 1999.
Column: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

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Comments

kwasivi Adegblorde | 5/11/2015 1:23:00 AM

What do we have to learn from these attacks / insults on Tsatsu Tsika by this idiot PhD holder Kwame Okuampa ? Is that what his PhD can do ? Stupid fool

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