Otchere-Darko Is A Bastard But Not Incurably Stupid--Part 4

The direction in which the former Executive Director of the Danquah Institute (DI) wanted to go became more than crystal clear to me, when after my name was deleted from the roll of Board Members of the DI, Mr. Gabriel Asare Otchere-Darko decided to let the name of Dr. Arthur Kobina Kennedy (aka The Idiot-of-Irmo), who had been penning and publishing reams of character-assassinating tirades calling the human rights advocacy and activist credentials of then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo into serious question. To be certain, it was the former Akufo-Addo Campaign Communications Director who widely publicized the so-called All-Die-Be-Die mantra, which the South Carolina-resident buffoon pontifically claimed to strikingly reflect the true character and nature of Candidate Akufo-Addo.

But that Mr. Otchere-Darko would delete my name from the roll of Board Members of the Danquah Institute, while that of Dr. Kennedy was left intact for more than two years, at least by my conservative count, ought to instructively inform the dear reader about precisely the sort of animus or vendetta that Mr. Otchere-Darko must have had for the person and character of yours truly, particularly vis-à-vis my determined and concentrated media battle against the unhealthy domination and entrenchment of the key operatives of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress on Ghana’s political landscape.

I have since been virulently accused by some of his supporters and friends in the media and elsewhere of having an axe to grind or a grudge to settle with Mr. Otchere-Darko, whose name, existence and relevance I could never have made a head or tail of prior to Nana Akufo-Addo’s official declaration of his presidential candidacy of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2007 or thereabouts. And to fully appreciate what he meant, when Mr. Otchere-Darko stated that he had decided to disengage my association with Danquah Institute, one also has to fully appreciate the fact that it was the same Mr. Otchere-Darko, and not Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, who led the thuggish charge against Mr. Paul Awentami Afoko, the indefinitely suspended National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, on the campus of the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, in 2007, or thereabouts, that resulted in the widely reported savage mauling of Mr. Afoko, whom Mr. Otchere-Darko had reportedly widely alleged to have either attempted to induce or actually induced some pre-pledged delegates of then-Candidate Akufo-Addo with money or liquid cash ranging from $100 (USD) and above to vote for Mr. Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, Mr. Afoko’s widely alleged favorite political horse in the 2008 presidential primary race that was held on the campus of the University of Ghana.

A significant part of the apparently raging inability of all the factional elements within the New Patriotic Party to cohesively rally behind the leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo, more than a year after Ghana’s former Foreign Minister, and before the latter position Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, was duly sworn into office as the fifth president of the country’s Fourth Republic, stems primarily from this Otchere-Darko-orchestrated bloody incident of December 2007, or thereabouts. Some of his most ardent critics and detractors have even suggested that Mr. Otchere-Darko ought to have been prosecuted and jailed, if Ghana’s was a robustly functioning democratic culture.

In this section of this series of columns aimed at putting events into perspective, my main focus is the widely alleged conspiracy, first disclosed to the media by Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region, to remove Mr. Peter Abum-Sarkodie, the former Acting Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his allegation, the well-known businessman and media operative claimed that the flagrant scheming for the removal of Mr. Abum-Sarkodie, a former lecturer of the Asante-Mampong Campus of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), was being deliberately and viciously orchestrated not strictly on the basis of poor performance, although that would be later alleged to be the reason, but simply to make way for the elder brother of Mr. Francis Asenso-Boakye, one of the two young Deputy Chiefs-of-Staff of the Akufo-Addo Presidency.

I have since then been racking my brains to figure out whether during the 8-year tenure of the Agyekum-Kufuor administration, there were any Akyem-born or descended operatives of the New Patriotic Party who served as Deputy Chief-of-Staff to Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, the thoroughbred Asante and staunch Agyekum-Kufuor lieutenant and a widely rumored arch Akufo-Addo detractor. I know the latter observation to be pregnant with truth and factual reality, because a relative and a close confidante of Nana Akufo-Addo’s has personally phoned me to discuss this subject but with a quite different edge to it.

Anyway, I went to bat for Mr. Abum-Sarkodie because further evidence, presented by the media, clearly indicated that the Asante-Mampong native had been given a raw deal. But where the underpinnings of the raging “Supremacy” battle between the Asante and Akyem factions of the ruling New Patriotic Party comes in also, ironically, involves the bona fide Asante forces that caused the highly unjustified removal of Mr. Abum-Sarkodie, at least in the quite credible opinion of Mr. Agyapong, the maverick whistleblower. We also need to highlight the fact that Mrs. Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, President Akufo-Addo’s Chief-of-Staff, was also, like yours truly and the dismissed Acting EPA Executive Director, born in Asante-Mampong. I also have the gut feeling that the “Asenso” name may be native to the Asante-Mampong Municipality.

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