Is Seidu Agongo from Kyebi?

Finally, as the great and immortalized African-American Human and Civil Rights Activist and Leader, Malcolm X, was known to be fond of saying, “The chickens are coming home to roost” in the corruptly fertile backyard of former President John Dramani Mahama, who never spares any prime opportunity to self-righteously accuse his more progressive and visionary successor, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, of being the most nepotistic Fourth Republican Ghanaian leader. Actually, Malcolm X was known to have openly made that allegedly fatal remark just once in the wake of the tragic assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

You see, those of us non-Anlo-Ewe bona fide Ghanaian citizens who had been deliberately ignored and marginalized and sidelined or left out of the governance loop by the Rawlings-led juntas of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and, subsequently, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), never openly and/or raucously complained even when it became nauseatingly obvious that the aforementioned juntas were shamelessly jampacked with the entire half-Anlo-Ewe sub-ethnic group of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings. But, now, rather absurdly, the key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress would have the rest of the Ghanaian citizenry believe that the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is unsavorily jampacked with nearly every Akyem and Akuapem relative, former love interests and close friends and associates of the former Attorney-General and Justice Minister under President John Agyekum-Kufuor.

Recently, though, it is becoming increasingly and hypocritically clear that not only did the self-styled “Northern Star” run the most nepotistic regime in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, Mr. Mahama may very well have also run the most ethnocentrically theft-prone or thievish government in Ghana’s postcolonial history. And on the latter count, of course, we are thinking about the all-northern packed Governing Board of the so-called Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), which also either supervised or brokered virtually every Ghanaian taxpayer-funded public contract exclusively offered to northern born and/or northern-descended Ghanaian businessmen and women. Legend had it that when the contracts were not being exclusively farmed out to “Ntafo” or “Apepefo,” as it were, they were being literally gifted to the Akan blood relatives of Mr. Mahama’s wife, Lordina. And, predictably, the results were strikingly and invariably the same. It was all about “chop-chop” or “create, loot and divvy up the loot.”

That was also the story of Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni, the widely known and/or alleged relative of Mrs. Lordina Mahama, who is currently on trial for some fraudulent contractual dealings while he was the Chief Executive Officer of the former Ghana Cocoa-Marketing Board (GCMB), presently known as Ghana COCOBOD, involving some imported fertilizers. But, of course, as the caption of this column clearly indicates, “Alhaji” Opuni is not the subject at issue here. But the latter is, nevertheless, a relevant player here, a person of interest, in legal parlance, since it was on Dr. Opuni’s watch that the SADA-sounding name of an allegedly shady business mogul called Mr. Seidu Agongo allegedly diverted about GHȻ 126.6 Million for the establishment of Heritage Bank, one of the indigenous banking establishments that were recently shuttered by the Bank of Ghana for operating what clearly appears to have been “suspicious” and under fraudulent pretenses.

Like Mr. Mahama’s “Cousin-in-Law” Opuni, Mr. Agongo is also currently being tried for possibly having “Woyomized” the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money and having criminally invested the same in the “sub-prime”-like establishment of the so-called Heritage Bank. Naturally, some of the details behind the Seidu Agongo Affair escape my non-banking-specialist’s understanding of how the banking industry conducts affairs or is operated in Ghana. I simply picked up the news story captioned “BoG Reveals How COCOBOD Cash Was Used to Set UP Heritage Bank” 3News.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/5/19), because I am very curious to know or learn whether the DNA coding of the apparent mega-scam has any affinity or consanguineal bond with the Gonja native who once told Ghanaian voters that they did not have any right to criticize his “Dumsor” job performance, including the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, because absolutely none of these critics had ever been a Chief Resident of the Jubilee-Flagstaff House.

The man who appointed Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni CEO of COCOBOD, and may very well have facilitated the Seidu Agongo Mega-Scam, would have Ghanaians facilely vacate their presence of mind or commonsense faculties and offer him another shot at what Mr. Mahama, who once adamantly refused to vacate his Vice-President’s bungalow and insisted on buying the same from the State on the cheap, is widely known to do best: rob the country raw and dry to the bone.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
January 5, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]