NPP Is Rather On A Learning Curve

Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah is absolutely right to observe that there is a raging crisis of governance control in the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) – (See “NPP Has Lost Control – Amoako-Baah” MyNewsGh.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/12/17). However, the reasons that the former Head of the History and Political Science Department at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) gives for the apparent governance crisis in the Akufo-Addo-led government is not entirely accurate. In the opinion of Dr. Amoako-Baah, the 8 years that the New Patriotic Party’s key operatives spent on the chaotic margins of the political opposition is the reason for their current funk or hangover.

Rather, it is to the extent that the New Patriotic Party’s leadership spent the past 8 years unwisely engaged in the politics of personal destruction that is taking such a heavy toll on the ability of party leaders to quickly transition from soap-box politicians and critics, as it were, into formidable power-brokers. I perfectly agree with the KNUST political scientist that the NPP leadership is on what is commonly referred to as a “Learning Curve,” and will soon rally to comfortably assume the reins of governance. Well, for those of our readers in need of further explanation, my ready analogy is that of a person who just lost both legs or hands in a near-fatal auto accident.

According to those who have personally experienced this horrific trauma, as well as systematic observation by medical scientists, the victim’s/patient’s mind tends to trick him/her into falsely believing that they have the full use of their limbs. In other words, while empirically or practically the New Patriotic Party’s leaders are officially in charge of administering the country, psychologically, they have yet to fully convince themselves of the fact that, indeed, they have effectively moved from the desperate status of powerlessness into being fully in charge of the nation’s governance apparatus.

If the preceding observation strikingly reads like a page taken from famed Franco-Martinican psychiatrist Dr. Frantz Fanon, the dear reader is not significantly far off the mark, as it were. Too much collective self-hatred has gone on during the past 8 years that the NPP was in opposition that the party’s leadership is convulsively struggling to kick off the deleterious and insidious mantle of abject diffidence. Ironically, it is this same psychological trauma or funk that is making the leaders of the now-main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) virulently deny the stark fact that they have lost the political power game, and are likely to languish on the margins of national governance for quite a long time to come. At least 8 years or more, as some media critics and commentators are predicting.

Likewise, I unreservedly agree with Dr. Amoako-Baah that the leaders of the NDC are being plain mischievous to think, and believe, that Ms. Otiko Afisa Djaba, the Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister’s public spat with Mr. Daniel Bugri-Naabu, the Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP, in any way vindicates the Mahama fanatics on the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC) who flatly refused to vote to confirm Ms. Djaba’s cabinet nomination. Needless to say, at absolutely no point during the vetting of the first-cousin of former President John Dramani Mahama, did any of the NDC-PAC minority members provide any forensically sustainable evidence pointing to the possibility of Ms. Djaba’s involvement in the brutal assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, then Upper-East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party.

Properly speaking, the emotionally charged spat between Ms. Djaba and Mr. Bugri-Naabu is akin to what African-Americans call “The Dozens,” and in the Ewe culture is called “Halo” or the poetry of abuse. It is mere “steam-letting” with absolutely no justiciable acts of criminality underneath the torrents of rhetoric. Which is why I find it to be absolutely nothing short of the patently absurd for the National Democratic Congress’ leadership to call on the Inspector-General of Police and the operatives of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to open an enquiry into the same.

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