NDC MP Went to La Bawaleshie to Intimidate NPP Voters and supporters

I will read and comment on several versions of the reports generated from the violence-inflected byelection of the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency in the Greater-Accra Region in due course (See “Assault on MP Sam George Will Be Investigated – Gov’t” Modernghana.com 2/2/19). For now, the first problem that confronts the critically-thinking reader has to do with why, in spite of the alleged prohibition of the use of any vehicles in the vicinity of polling stations around the country on election days, nevertheless, Mr. Samuel George Nartey, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the Ningo-Prampram Constituency, also in the Greater-Accra Region, but clearly outside the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency, was reported to have led a motorcade of some 15 motorbikes into the vicinity of one of the polling stations in this constituency that also includes parts of the area around the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, if the intent or objective of the motorbike riders was not to foment an atmosphere or climate of fear and intimidation.

On the latter count must be recalled the fact that Mr. Nartey, the former Presidential Staffer of former President John Dramani Mahama, was widely alleged by Mr. ET Mensah, the longtime and former NDC-MP for Ningo-Prampram, to have used crass and raw intimidation tactics to unseat Mr. Mensah. In other words, the so-called Mr. Sam George has an inescapable and infamous track-record of routinely using violence and intimidation tactics to have his way. Indeed, for quite some time, after he had violently and flagrantly unseated his predecessor, Mr. Mensah, the former CEO of the erstwhile Accra-Tema City Council or Mayor of Accra, flatly and adamantly refused to talk to the young rambunctious butterball. It is also clear that Mr. Nartey had absolutely no business in the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency, since the Somanya-, Eastern Region, born former NDC activist-propagandist is not registered to vote in the constituency in which he claims to have been brutally assaulted by operatives of our National Security Agency (NSA).

We are also reliably informed by Mr. Bryan Acheampong, the Minister of State in-charge of National Security, that Mr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije – I suppose he is the same as the former Mayor of Accra, presently the NDC-MP for Ablekuma-Central, also in the Greater-Accra Region, had categorically warned Mr. Nartey to steer himself and his gang of would-be electoral thugs or ballot-snatching gangsters clear of the area. What all the preceding points to is the incontrovertible fact that the Ningo-Prampram NDC-MP was deliberately looking to foment trouble and/or create mayhem, when he decided to criminally break the law by leading a group of NDC-affiliated motorbike riders into the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency. Mr. Nartey is also reported to have entered the home of the NDC’s parliamentary candidate for the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency, Mr. Delali Kwasi Brempong, whereupon some party stalwarts already inside the residence of Mr. Brempong allegedly proceeded to open fire on some national-security operatives trying to ascertain the identity and mission of these intruders.

We must also highlight the fact that this is not the first time that operatives of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress have been accused of fomenting violence at a byelection. Ghanaians witnessed similar incidents of violence at Talensi, in the Upper-East Region, and at Kwabeng, in the Atiwa Constituency, in Nana Akufo-Addo’s electoral stronghold of the Eastern Region. In Atiwa, the then NADMO (National Disaster Management Organization) Deputy National Coordinator and the extant NDC’s National Women’s Organizer, was widely reported to have run her chauffeur-driven car into a crowd of largely New Patriotic Party members and supporters. And then, again, at Talensi, it was the NDC-affiliated and Mahama-funded Azorka Boys, the notorious and one of the first NDC-sponsored vigilante groups in the country, that was reportedly sicced on the NPP supporters by none other than the Mahama-appointed substantive Interior Minister at the time, to wit, Mr. Mark Woyongo.

Which is precisely why the publicly declared intent by former President John Dramani Mahama to drag Ghana onto the brink of civil strife during the 2020 general election ought not to come as any surprise to avid watchers and students of Fourth-Republican Ghanaian political culture. We also need to know whether any of the guns allegedly used by the NDC apparatchiks in their exchange of gunfire with our National Security Agents were legally registered. And if not, how did these party hacks and stalwarts and foot-soldiers, so-called, came by the same? We also need to know who authorized the NDC’s National Women’s Organizer to photograph some of our National Security Agents at one of the polling stations in the Ayawaso-West Wuogon Constituency, and for what purpose or purposes. It clearly looks as if the NDC apparatchiks were either out to court trouble or hell-bent on creating one.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 3, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]