Narcissistic Spio-Garbrah Will Never Be a Good NDC Flagbearer – Part 2

Indeed, if any critically-thinking observer of his erratic political career had any doubts about the neurotically self-centered and megalomaniacal cheapness of the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the London-based Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO), the rules or terms of the pathologically narcissistic essay competition reportedly sponsored by our protagonist promptly and unreservedly gave Mr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah away. You see, for a contest opened to approximately 30,000 “elected” National Democratic Congress’ communications operatives, one would have expected that the contest would have first started at the constituency or district level, with the winners at these local levels being selected to compete at the regional level. Which means that at the very least, 10 major centers across the country would have been organized, after which the winners at each of these regional centers would then have been selected to participate in a national contest, established and/or hosted by the Spio-Garbrah-For-President in 2020 Campaign in Accra.

Instead, what we have here is the insultingly cheap establishment of three main awards, namely, a First Prize, a Second Prize and a Third Prize, respectively, worth GHȻ 3,000, GHȻ 2,000 and GHȻ 1,000, adding up to a piddling GHȻ 6,000. And then another GHȻ 1,000 split between the Fourth and Fifth place winners (See “Why Spio-Garbrah Will Be a Good NDC Flagbearer Essay Competition Launched” Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 8/2/18). For starters, you get a sheepishly clear sense of a political scam-artist who has absolutely no sense of justice and fair play. I mean, why establish Fourth- and Fifth-place winners when the latter two positions are worth the same amount of money? Why not, for example, award GHȻ 500 to the Fourth-place winner and GHȻ 250 to the Fifth-place winner to synch with the geometrical or mathematical logic of the first three prizes? This is clearly the self-produced profile of a pathologically miserly or niggardly contest producer who has absolutely no rational sense of investment or altruism in anybody else but himself.

Does Mr. Spio-Garbrah, if he is really the expert communications specialist that he would have the rest of the world believe, know the amount of energy and time it takes to research and produce the quality of essays that he is demanding of the contestants? By the time that you read this column, Dear Reader, the contest would have already ended, with the winners having already been chosen, we are told, by a panel of experts supervised by some officials or tutors from the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ). Dear Reader, I am deeply sorry for any of the nearly 30,000 elected NDC communicators who decide to wastefully spend their precious time and intellectual energy participating in this decidedly no-win contest. Even the topmost winners are epic losers here. Then also, I find Mr. Spio-Garbrah’s promise to sponsor some of these unsuspecting contestants abroad for advanced or further studies, to be equally insulting and plain deceptive. And he does not even tell his audience precisely what form of advanced or further studies he has in mind; as well, precisely which locations or countries abroad contestants so selected would be traveling to for such studies.

It is only in Ghana that any fly-by-night politician like Mr. Spio-Garbrah can make such ludicrously vague and empty promises and actually get followers to lap it up. About the only aspect of his sales pitch that I happen to agree with, in principle, is the imperative need for party communicators to do a lot of research before going public to debate their political opponents, although I am uncertain of whether the former Education Minister has ever paid attention to this advice that he is giving the NDC communicators himself. He can also not cavalierly pretend as if he is not and has not been an integral part of the problem of the poor communication skills of the propaganda operatives of the National Democratic Congress all these couple of decades. Indeed, if the communications apparatus of the National Democratic Congress were as viable as it needed to be, Mr. Spio-Garbrah would not be organizing such a cheap and neurotically self-centered essay competition and having judges selected from the GIJ to evaluate or grade these essays.

I am, of course, also wondering how much he is paying or would be paying the GIJ contest judges. He says that he also intends to personally train some of the contestants. I am highlighting this because anybody who has been studiously following the unconscionably opportunistic political career of the former Mahama-appointed Trade Minister gets a morally disturbing sense of Mr. Spio-Garbrah scarcely having time for anybody besides himself. Maybe it would shape up to be a bit different this time around, once the prospective trainee comes to terms with the sobering realization that being personally trained or instructed by the former Rawlings-appointed Education Minister is no privilege, at all, but virtual slavery resplendently caparisoned in diplomatic speak.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
August 21, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]