Allotey-Jacobs Should Cut His Quaitoo Crap

It is this sort of vacuous and cynical moral grandstanding by National Democratic Congress’ leaders like Mr. Bernard Allotey-Jacobs that charges me with fury and makes me want to go to war with these pathological hypocrites. It is a well-known secret that the Northerners call us Southerners “Kabonga” or the uncircumcised ones. You see, they stereotypically think they are more civilized than the predominantly Akan people of the South, because long before the introduction of Islam and Christianity to our portion of the country, and especially the Islamized “Wanzam,” or surgical clippers of the prepuce or foreskin of the male genitalia, most of us Southerners had absolutely no knowledge of circumcision, which these predominantly Muslim Northerners, somehow, equate with civilization. Of course, the historical reality is much more complex than that.

What Mr. William Agyapong Quaitoo, the former Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture is alleged to have stereotypically said about Ghanaians of northern descent is nothing new. I am also quite certain that Northerners have even worse forms of stereotypical descriptions than “Kabonga” for us Southerners and even among their various ethnic groups that they are presently pretending to be homogeneous and sacrosanct.

Which, of course, does not necessarily make Mr. Quaitoo’s characterization of Northerners as a “difficult” people and congenital “liars” right. But the fact of the matter is that thoroughgoing corrupt politicians like former President John Dramani Mahama have said far worse things about the Akan than can be printed on these pages. For Mr. Mahama, for example, the Akan are a subhuman species of humanity who are not worth voting for by any northern-descended Ghanaian, unless than Akan presidential candidate material happens to be the running-mate of a northern-descended substantive presidential candidate.

The irony here, though, is that Mr. Mahama sleeps with an Akan woman on most nights, that is, when he is not busy, rumor has it, gallivanting and pounding millet in the sanctums of other women and hatching “pikinabolos” left and right, front and center. That is where his widely alleged kleptocratic and shamelessly thievish attitude comes in. the man conspicuously lives above his means, and so he has to logically steal and extort payolas to make ends meet.

Once, the late President John Evans Atta-Mills was widely reported to have accused his immediate predecessor, Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor, of not being sensitive enough to have built adequate cold-store facilities in the Fante-dominated Central Region, as well as coastal areas in the country because, as an Asante, according to his then-archrival, Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor did not understand the ways and cultures of the denizens of the Ghanaian littoral.

The obvious implication here was that the Fante and the other coastal peoples in the country would be better off voting for one of their own, instead of one of these “jungle bunnies.” In other words, the key operatives of the Trokosi-minted National Democratic Congress have a far lengthier track-record of thriving on the noxious politics of ethnic chauvinism or tribalism than their New Patriotic Party (NPP) counterparts.

And so it is not clear precisely what he means, when Mr. Allotey-Jacobs says that the forced scapegoating resignation of Mr. Quaitoo ought to serve as a lesson to all Ghanaian politicians. Well, the real and only lesson that I see here is the imperative and dire need for the leaders of the ruling New Patriotic Party to muster the requisite courage to defend ministerial appointees who inadvertently provoke the ire or court the displeasure of people who are themselves as chauvinistic and bigoted as those whom they presume to scapegoat in place of their own moral foibles.

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