Ablakwa’s GH₵ 25,000 Question

Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa

I had almost totally forgotten about it, until the Tongu-North’s National Democratic Congress’s Member of Parliament raised the rather critical question regarding the “desecration” of the Presidency, supposedly, by the Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen-headed Trade and Industry Ministry (See “Carlos Trade[sic] ‘Insults with Okudzeto Over $100K-to-Sit-Close-to-Akufo-Addo Dinner” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 12/19/17). This amused me in no mean way because not too long ago, the Mahama-Kanazoe Payola Story broke in the case regarding the direct and shameless solicitation of a bribe in the shape and form of an American-made Ford Expedition SUV from a Burkinabe contractor by the name of Monsieur Gibril (Jibril) Kanazoe, who had direct business dealings with the Atta-Mills government. The now-former President John Dramani Mahama was then the Vice-President of Ghana.

The Mahama-Kanazoe Payola Scam Artistry did not become banner headlines until the young award-winning journalist with the Multimedia Group of Companies dredged it up and put it smack in the middle of the mainstream media, in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. I am quite certain that this brazen and shameful solicitation of a kickback in the name of the Ghanaian taxpayer and voter, significantly contributed to the staggering loss of the then-incumbent President John Dramani Mahama. Yet we never heard Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa even once accuse his boss of having desecrated the Presidency. It thus appears that in the playbook of the former Deputy Education Minister and, before the latter post, former Deputy Information Minister, official thievery among the key operatives of the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress is perfectly kosher.

For me, personally, though, perhaps the most outrageous desecration of the Ghanaian Presidency occurred when then-President John Evans Atta-Mills stood side-by-side with Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome and mordantly castigated the critics of this self-confessed mega-thief for calling him out on the GH₵ 51.2 million that Mr. Woyome squirreled out of our National Treasury and divvied up with nearly every key operative of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress. But I am quite certain that Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa logs this as one of the greatest economic achievements of the NDC. We are reserving the $ 5 million (USD) that former President Jerry John Rawlings allegedly extorted from Gen. Sani Abacha, late, for a separate column on the so-called revolutionary principles and values of the erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), which are supposed to have also informed the foundational fabric of the faux-socialist and revolutionary National Democratic Congress.

Suffice it to tangentially observe here that about the only thing “revolutionary” about both the Provisional National Defense Council and the National Democratic Congress, regards the unprecedented extent of the wanton pillage and plunder of our national resources and heritage. Well, he may not have directly desecrated the Presidency in 2012, when Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa publicly claimed that the whopping amount of GH₵ 25,000, which he kept in his car, had been stolen by his driver who had taken the vehicle to a car washing bay or car wash. The Tongu-North’s NDC-MP has never explained how he had come by such a huge amount of money outside of his bank account. And so it would be quite interesting if the Special Independent Public Prosecutor decides to take this matter up come 2018.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 31, 2017
E-mail: [email protected]