Dr. Donkor May Be Suffering from the Nyaho-Tamakloe Syndrome

Dr Kwabena Donkor

This is my second take or write-up on the recent appointment of the popular New Patriotic Party’s National Youth Organizer, Mr. Sammy Awuku, as Board Chairman of the National Youth Employment Agency (YEA), but not necessarily the second to be published. I tend to write and file my columns in three different packs or tranches of 10, not in any particular order either thematically or subject-wise. On this occasion, though, I decided to Google the professional qualifications of Mr. Ras Mubarak, the former Executive Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA), who presently serves as the main opposition National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Kumbungu Constituency, in the Northern Region.

I quickly came up short in the effort because Mr. Mubarak, who is widely alleged to be the nephew of Mr. Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the Kumasi-Asawase NDC-MP and Minority Chief Whip, has absolutely no college degrees whatsoever. Indeed, the closest Mr. Ras Mubarak comes to being college-educated is the one six-week summer course that the former youth organizer reportedly took on the campus of one of the major European universities several years back.

As I pondered the very public and imperious impugnation of Mr. Awuku’s credentials and/or qualifications to be named to the post of Board Chairman of the National Youth Employment Agency, in much the same way that Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe presumed to do in the case of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s naming of Mr. Dominic Nitiwul, the NPP’s MP for Bimbilla, in the Northern Region, as Defense Minister, it starkly became clear to me that Dr. Kwabena Donkor, the former Power Minister, was wracked by a combination of sheer envy and double standards (See “We’ll Be Okay If Awuku Serves as Member of YEA Board – Minority” Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/17/17).

I have often remarked that the proprietary arrogance of some of the front-row operatives of the National Democratic Congress more than breaks the bounds of moral decency. It actually verges on the criminally felonious. Dr. Donkor, who displayed gross and horrid incompetence as former President John Dramani Mahama’s custom-tailored Power Minister, goes on to list the names of the other Board Members of the YEA, among them, Dr. Kwame Amoako-Tuffuor and Mr. Justin Kodua Frimpong, almost as if to imply that the appointment of Mr. Awuku were some sort of a personality contest.

But what irked me to the quick was the unmistakable implication, on the part of the impugner/critic, that, somehow, Dr. Donkor’s former boss and prime benefactor, namely, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, had followed the country’s Constitution to the letter in even half of his executive and judicial appointments and decisions on his watch. Needless to say, his quite well-calculated, albeit laughably mischievous, attempt to play Mr. Bright Wereko-Brobbey, the Deputy Minister for Employment and Labor Relations, for just one obvious example, against Mr. Awuku, will not wash.

It will not wash because those members of the YEA Board listed above have already distinguished themselves well enough and are also too confident in their sense of personal and professional achievements to be fazed by the nuisance rants and petty-minded guff of failed politicians and cabinet appointees like Dr. Donkor, whose advanced degrees in both Business Management and Development Planning have yet to benefit the average Ghanaian citizen whose interests he purports to be serving.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 17, 2017
E-mail: [email protected]