Who and What do I Compare NPP with?

In this publication, I shall treat NPP as a people with a common ideology. However, any expressed concern is not about the entirety of the members of the party but their so-called “book long” hierarchy. It is more to do with the leadership than the ordinary foot soldiers, members and sympathisers of the party.

From the way I hear how most of the NPP appointees behaviour once the party wins election dating from former President Kufuor’s time until that of His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s, they totally become different persons altogether. One will never recognise they were the very people who had one palm in another begging people to vote for them and interacting with them on campaign tours and platforms. I am not calling on the appointees to continue to familiarise with the people but the way they erect impregnable walls around them, pretending not to know the very people who stood by them on campaign platforms to address the electorates, canvass for them to be elected, is indeed shocking and quite reprehensible.

I shall compare them to a bunch of ungrateful people who are as obstinate as Mrs Charlotte Osei who never heeded any sensible admonition given to her. She thought she was almighty and could do whatever she wanted but in the end, she has seen how vulnerable and Mrs Nobody that she is all due to being stubborn and full of herself. Truly, “obstinacy is the cause of the horns of the hornbill”

Before I continue, let me pause to tell the public a true story about the family of the late executed Head of State General (formerly Colonel) Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. He had a son who was friends with three Lower Sixth formers at St. Aquinas Secondary School in Cantonments in Accra. I was by then an Upper Sixth former. He used to visit these friends. St. Aquinas Secondary school is a Day school but the sixth formers are boarders.

One day, this son of the Head of State took his friends to Burma camp to visit his family home. When the students returned to school after spending some hours with the son of General I. K. Acheampong, they recounted a story that I shall never forget. The students were themselves shocked beyond belief. They said when they were taken to the home of the Head of State, the wife of General I. K. Acheampong, Mrs Faustina Acheampong, welcomed them in. She prepared them food and she, herself wearing an apron, served them. When they finished eating, she came to remove the plates, trays, drinking cups, etc., to go and wash them herself. They said they could not belief their eyes. The wife of a Head of State doing that to them, students who felt within themselves as nobodies in the house of a Head of State but being treated like royals. Further to this, when the Head of State came home to meet them, he shook their hands one by one. Wow! What were they seeing? Is it a dream or what, they used to say.

From that day on, they never ceased having absolute respect for General I. K. Acheampong and his family. They were proud of the family which they saw as being down to earth persons. I saw the son myself but never spoke with him. He had a big head, little description about his physical appearance.

Can any of the NPP highly-placed appointees compare to the family of Head of State I. K. Acheampong as recounted by the students? I doubt it. The humility of General Acheampong, his kindness and sympathy for people, despite his promiscuity, are unrivalled, going by the story of the students.

I am not expecting President Nana Akufo-Addo and his teeming appointees to do as Head of State General I. K. Acheampong did in terms of humility and approachability. Nonetheless, I do not expect them to cast a blind eye to the very people who had not long ago been with them everywhere helping them to come to power. This is an act of ungratefulness. I know they cannot receive every Ghanaian and I do not want them to open their doors widely to everyone but those who took the risk to go extra miles, risking their lives to help them come to power, should they blank such persons, then I will say that is the height of ungratefulness on the part of the NPP leadership.

Will they be able to return to such people to seek their assistance when it is time for re-election? Let me cite two persons here. That man who met one Alex Daddy at London Heathrow airport on a fateful December afternoon; why is Alex Daddy claiming not to know him? Has he so soon forgotten the good job he did for him because he, Alex Daddy is now an appointee of NPP enjoying a better life? What about the good job DJ Sources (Mr Sarkodie) of UK online Sources radio did to canvass and galvanize his listeners as well as raising money to support the NPP campaign? Have the NPP not forgotten completely about him? Has any NPP guru bothered to recognise the good job he did let alone, say thank you to him?

Let me compare NPP leadership to a farmer to home in my point. I am a son of deceased farmers and I was a farmer myself until the judicial corruption in Ghana and the stupidity of some Kumawu sub-chiefs including Dr Yaw Sarfo himself, cost me my 200-acre farmland with its citrus and teak a few years ago.

When a farmer is going to his or her farm in the morning, especially if it is a woman, she has to ensure she has got her basket, cutlass, water (in case there is no stream around the farm) etc. When she leaves behind her cutlass, she cannot do anything when she gets to the farm. When she forgets her basket, she cannot convey the necessary things to the farm let alone, bringing back home farm produce and other needed things, although one can improvise one using a kind of woven palm leaves called in the Ghanaian parlance as “bede”.

NPP can be compared to a farmer who has forgotten her cutlass (machete) home while going to the farm. To win election to stay in power longer to implement your good policies, you need a combination of strategies. That very combination is what the NPP lacks as a party hence are unable to last when elected into power. Out of the sixty-one years of Ghana’s independence, the metamorphosed UGCC into NPP has been in power for barely fourteen years.

I should not be wasting time but to suggest to NPP what to do. The fact that they are overflowing with “book long” does not mean that they are getting everything right. “Book long” is like grey hair which is said not to be a repository of wisdom.

• NPP must learn to give RECOGNITION to people who excelled in their tasks to bring them to power. They should not be like ostriches to bury their heads in the sand when their backyard is into a conflagration. They should not slam their doors in the face of those who have performed uniquely well to bring them to power. They should not pretend or decide not to know them but acknowledge them and say thank you to such persons. Mere expressed thank you can suffice at times.

• NPP must not underrate the importance of COMMUNICATION. It is an effective weapon to use to ensure the success of marriage, teamwork, government and you just name it. It is through effective communication that information can be disseminated. The leadership of NPP as I see them now do not give a hoot about communication. Almost all the media outlets in Ghana were supportive of the NDC and most of them belong to them. They are waiting and come election time, they will rally behind the NDC to misinform the public just to enhance the chances of NDC by undermining the NPP. Now that the NPP is in power, do the leaders care to have radio stations that will support their cause and inform the public accordingly without throwing dust into the eyes of the people as the NDC do?

• The NPP must fight the institutional corruption upon which promise many a Ghanaian voted for the party. Time is running out but the Special Prosecutor has not even arraigned a single person, yet the Economic and Organized Crime Organization (EOCO), the Accountant General, Captain Smart of Adom FM and many others have information on those who have caused financial loss to the State. We have the Members of Parliament who doubling as Government Ministers accepted monthly double salary for years in contravention to the law. What is the Special Prosecutor doing about them and what is he waiting for before he switches into action?

• Is the alleged “Akyem Caucus” of close-knit family members and cronies working tirelessly for the President to succeed as far as the delivery of his numerous promises that have earned him the nickname “King Promise” goes, or they are simply there to enrich themselves? Mrs Gloria Akuffo, the Attorney General, must be seen to be fast tracking cases. The swindler Alfred Agbesi Woyome’s case should have been dealt with long ago to see him rotting in jail if he has decided not to pay up.

Without using recognition and communication as well as reaching out to the grassroots and also pulling down any iron walls erected around the appointees, NPP will be likened to a farmer who is going to farm but has left her cutlass behind at home. How difficult will the situation become when the time comes for the cutlass to be needed but there is none? So shall the fate of NPP become if they failed to heed vital advice. It is not only by delivering your promises that the electorate will vote for you but also, by letting explanatory and convincing messages reach them.

A word to the wise is enough. I have opened up my overflowing fountain of wisdom for NPP to drink freely from. However, as Ghanaians want free money and material things but not advice and wisdom, I shall shut the fountain and begin to find ways to sell it.

I shall write about diabetes and how it is killing close friends in Ghana. I shall attempt to offer advice as usual when I do write. I have just learnt that one Mr Akwasi Mensah, the brother of the late Mr Atakora has died of diabetes in Kumawu about four days ago.

I dedicate this article to my senior brother Kyei Boateng in Canada.

Rockson Adofo