Make No Mistake, My Fellow Ghanaians, Nii Lante Spoke for the NDC

Nii Lantey Vanderpuije Aka Odododiodioo King Kong

Following the prison sentencing of Mr. Abuga Pele, the former GYEEDA Coordinator and the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Chiana-Paga Constituency, in the Upper-East Region, to four- and six-year concurrent terms, Mr. Nii Lante Vanderpuye, the former Mahama-appointed Deputy Minister for Local Government, came out to publicly denounce the sentencing, for corruption and deliberately causing financial loss to the State, and promised that the first order of business in the leadup to the 2020 General Election, was for the country’s main opposition party to work tirelessly around the clock to ensure that Mr. Abuga Pele and his associate in crime, Mr. Philip Assibit, the Chief Executive Officer of the Goodwill International Group, who was sentenced to four- and 12-year concurrent terms of imprisonment, were immediately sprung out of jail (See “Nii Lante Refused to Apologize Over Abuga Pele Goof” Modernghana.com 2/27/18). Mr. Lante Vanderpuye, who was reported to have issued his promise during one of the so-called monthly National Democratic Congress’ Unity Walks, held in Somanya, in the Manya-Krobo District of the Eastern Region.

That Mr. Nii Lante Vanderpuye, who is also the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the Odododiodio Constituency in Central-Accra, spoke for the party’s top hierarchy, cannot be gainsaid, in part because it is all too clear that had former President John Dramani Mahama been returned to the newly renamed Flagstaff House, or Jubilee House, properly speaking, the two convicted NDC party-machine operatives would never have been sentenced to serve any prison terms. We know this to be an incontrovertible fact because in the runup to the 2012 Presidential Election, then-Interim President Mahama categorically and pontifically promised Ghanaian voters that his first order of business would be to ensure that Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the infamous NDC financier who unconscionably scammed the Ghanaian taxpayer to the humongous tune of GHȻ 51.2 Million, returned the taxpayers’ money to our National Treasury, where he had stolen the same from, with the brazen complicity of such cardinal NDC operatives as the extant Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and the latter’s Deputies; the extant Finance Minister and the latter’s Deputies; the extant Governor of the Bank of Ghana and the latter’s Deputies, with the “Pontifical Blessings” of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, who publicly stood beside Mr. Woyome and vehemently and self-righteously condemned the critics of this mega-thief, largely some of the leading operatives of the then-main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Need I say that throughout his single four-year tenure, President Mahama did a diddly little to force Mr. Woyome to return his pelf. Actually, it would be shortly revealed that nearly every NDC member who qualified to be listed on the rollcall of the party’s “Who’s Who” register had received a decent portion of the fruits of the Woyome theft. In sum, when we talk about the lead operatives of the NDC, we are also talking about certified stealers or thieves of the Ghanaian taxpayer’s hard-earned wealth. Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the longtime career General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, who cynically tried, without success, (serves him right), to get Mr. Lante Vanderpuye to retract his confessional comment about the NDC’s intention of releasing Messrs. Abuga Pele and Philp Assibit from the pair’s well-deserved prison sentences, as their first order of business, should the NDC be returned to power in January 2021, has himself yet to answer for his collusive and collaborative scamming of Ghanaian taxpayers with Mr. Jabesh Amissah-Arthur, the younger brother of former Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, and former Chief Executive Officer of the Bui Dam Power Project Authority, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of cedis.

In the latter instance, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia was allowed to overprice cement blocks that his brickmaking company supplied the Bui Dam Authority, relative to the standard price offered other suppliers. Questioned by the media at the time about this patent act of financial criminality, the former Rawlings-appointed Deputy Defense Minister would retort that the cement blocks manufactured by his company were far more qualitative than those that were produced by other competing suppliers. Now, the logical question then becomes: Why did the Bui Dam Authority’s Board of Trustees permit other cement-block suppliers to sell the Authority poor quality products? This is an area of great interest that Special Independent Public Prosecutor Martin Amidu would do the nation great good to investigate and take the necessary action to redeem the inalienable integrity of our democracy.

We also need to quickly point out that the adamant refusal by Mr. Lante Vanderpuye to retract his promise to have Messrs. Abuga Pele and Philip Assibit released from prison, should the NDC win the December 2020 General Election, clearly stems from the fact that this was an issue that had been discussed by the NDC’s movers-and-shakers, of which conclusion Mr. Lante Vanderpuye, the okro-mouth, had prematurely and, some cynics would even say, rather unwisely made a clean public breast of, in Shakespearean parlance. Asking him to retract, in the opinion of Mr. Lante Vanderpuye, untenably made the NDC leadership appear to be knavishly unprincipled and even cowardly. Now, Ghanaian voters have been nakedly made aware of the fact that when it comes to the country’s socioeconomic development, the NDC’s Emperors have absolutely no clothes, let alone gold-gilt crowns.

On the Abuga Pele Affair, there was also the mysterious murder of a young doctor at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital whose father was widely alleged to have had an axe to grind with the former Chiana-Paga NDC-MP. Here, though, it would be very instructive and, perhaps, even morally and judicially edifying if the Attorney-General and/or the Independent Special Public Prosecutor, who also happens to hail from the Upper-East Region, opened up some investigative channels. There may or may not be any Abuga Pele connection here. But, of course, we will never know or be certain of this until this puzzle has been thoroughly scrutinized and the most logical conclusions conclusively established.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 31, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]