Is The NPP Still Bragging?

Over-confidence is bad but confidence is good; over-confidence is a product of a pretentious and fooled mind. Over-confidence begets bragging. And bragging usually begets regrets. Bragging is a disguise worn by shallow minds and attention seekers. They specialize in creating mountains out of molehills. When it backfires, bragging can be forlorn.

Be honest, do you brag? What about? Okay, if you don’t brag, look around and tell me what you see. Haven’t you seen that bragging is fast becoming a culture? People, in their desperate bid to create a larger than life perception about themselves, brag with careless abandon. Braggers are everywhere. Even social media platforms have been hijacked by these cacophonous creatures. I shall deal extensively on their social media madness on a later encounter.

History is littered with stories which are capable of making the proudest man humble. I choose to use one example of such true stories as a background for this piece. Have you ever heard of the famous ship, ‘Titanic’, which sank en-route her voyage from the British city of Southampton to the American city of New York? Ahh! Hundreds of millionaires tousled to secure tickets for the cruise. Those who couldn’t secure tickets cursed their luck.

Somewhere around 1911, engineers working on the luxury ship declared that, “the captain can, by simply moving an electric switch, instantly close the doors throughout, practically making the vessel unsinkable.” It was nicknamed the unsinkable because it was equipped with the most sophisticated safety gadgets. On the day of the ill-fated journey, a crew member reportedly bragged to a passenger that, “not even God can sink the Titanic.”

The eleven storey high ship sailed on April 15, 1912, precisely at 11:40pm while the occupants were carousing even as the ship was on course, the ship was struck by an iceberg, and three hours later, it sank carrying down with her one thousand, five hundred and three men and women. Down beneath the waves sank the notable gentlemen and their glittering ladies on a cold ill-fated night.

Till date, the question still being asked is: “Did God sink the Titanic?” Remember, a crew member seemingly dared God by bragging that, “not even God can sink the Titanic.”

As I contemplate on the Titanic catastrophe, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) jumps into my thinking. Dear, like the Titanic, NPP is also very huge. It is regarded as the largest opposition political party in Ghana. Today, merely twenty four years after it was formed, the party is seemingly on the brink of death. The party is seemingly sinking in the murky waters of Ghanaian politics.

And how did the NPP get to this point? I must stress that almost all of the party’s problems are self-inflicted. For almost a decade under Akufo-Addo, adulterated brand of democracy was forced down the throats of its members. They couldn’t spit out the poisonous watery. They suffered so much in silence. When some mustered enough courage to grumble, he felt emboldened and continued pooh-poohing on their collective integrity.

Under his rein, NPP election became a do-or-die affair. Akufo Addo misruled and foisted himself as an emperor over his party. He handpicked stooges as party officials and even had the effrontery to withhold the resources of constituencies whose leaders were not willing to kiss his ass. When he violated common sense by running for a third term bid, Akufo Addo being Akufo Addo imposed Freddy Blay on the party as National Chairman. Till now, the sham called ‘suspension’ which produced Blay as Chairman ranks the party as one of the most flawed judicial exercises in the world. Even the benefactor, Blay, later attested to it.

The sins of Akufo Addo’s leadership are unraveling, and they may not yet hear the worst. The party was serially raped, and minus deific intervention, they may not recover swiftly, not this era of unity foisted on intimidation and abject fear.

For eight long years, NPP moved in circles. They were invariably plotting their fall when the likes of Paul Afoko were pushed out of office by those who thought that they were god. When aggrieved constituency officers started dissenting to what others referred to as unlawful, the bigwigs cared less about the situation by refusing to put their house in order. Even Akufo Addo did come out to say that the party is passing through a purging period, and that he was ready to crush those he considered spies within the folk. They claimed that those distressed were the bad eggs. He mocked them by doubting their chances of upstaging the mighty NPP. Ouch! How wrong was he! In his utter ignorance, he forgot that Miss Karma is a bitch. Has he forgotten so fast, the lesson late Mills thought him in the 2008 polls? How about little John Mahama, three months old JM and his ‘ede bee K3k3’? I thought experience learning not to repeat same mistakes in life?

Like the crew member, who bragged that not even God could sink the ‘Titanic’, NPP’s former National Chairman, Peter McManu, opened his mouth too wide when he bragged about his party’s invincibility and declared near-immortal longevity in the obsessive quest to rule Ghana forever in May, 2007.

Instead of being remorse in consonance with the suspended national officers, Obiri-Boahene opted for the absurd. His words: ‘Nana Addo will rule Ghana, whether they like it or not, and Dr Bawumia will take over from Nana Addo.” ‘He subsequently told members to freely exit from the party because there was no fence wall around the party, if they were not happy about decisions of the party’.

Obiri-Boahene’s statement wouldn’t have mattered much if they party was behaving sanely. When a party with a seemingly insane modus operandi vows to rule at all cost, that statement was like a curse. All round the country, multitudes were licking their wounds.

In Ashanti Region, Volta Region, Brong Ahafo and Norhern Region, same maladies which were rife at the national level were replicated. Instead of mobilizing positively for the polls, they were busily bragging how “those regions is NPP regions.” They also bragged that if elections are conducted a hundred times, they would record landslide victories in most constituencies, forgetting that 2008 and 2012 was branded with same psychosis and while the masses were pondering on such declarations, elections arrived. Guess what! Humble persons were installed instead of being elected. When the braggarts complained, they were told to go to hell. And they went to hell. That “hell” is the election petition.

Make no mistake; this brief is not NPP’s autopsy report. They are all aware of these things and I need not flog the dead horse any further. But let me point to the fact that, “that person” who made himself a ready figure for the kidnapping of the people’s franchise should not still be parading himself royally if they are a courageous entity. Instead of apologizing for the heinous crimes perpetrated during that shambolic suspension, his hirelings bragged from the Hilltop about a so-called party structures mandate.

In a nut shell, the NPP came, saw and failed to conquer. Yes, in a democratic system of governance, the masses are unconquerable. But NPP shot itself in the foot by displaying antics which are totally alien to democracy.

All in all, life is full of lessons. Experience, they say, is the best teacher. No doubt, NPP has fallen, but the challenge is for them to look inwards and correct some anomalies. The party has been pushed to a corner. Minus court litigations, NPP is in charge of Ashanti and Eastern. The onus lies on the leaders of these regions to lead the people well, and prove to the world that their party has repented. If this is done, the party will prove to the world that they are like the Greek mythical bird Phoenix which consumes itself in flames to be reborn a new from its ashes. Yes, the NPP can be a born again party. However, if they do otherwise, it will just confirm the doomsday assertion that the NPP is a modern day ‘titanic.’

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