Happy 75, President of Ghana! -Part 5

He does not provide any forensically sustainable evidence to prove his accusation of corruption against President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, except to state that since the screening of the Anas Aremeyaw Anas’ filmographic documentary titled “Number Twelve,” no serious attempt has been made by the Akufo-Addo Administration to bring Mr. Kwasi Nyantakyi, the former President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), to justice. Even more flagrantly insulting to the intelligence of any Ghanaian citizen of age, who lived under the monopolistically corrupt reign-of-terror that was the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy is the following tirade against President Akufo-Addo: “I can’t stop saying this in every article I write: Anas is fetching water with a bucket full of holes. He can investigate and expose one million corrupt Ghanaian officials like Nyantakyi, yet no one will step into a prison yard in Ghana because the one leading Ghana is also filthy [sic] corrupt” (See “The Illegitimate and Despotic Government of Ghana” Modernghana.com 3/30/19).

Naturally, nobody expects a diehard Trokosi Nationalist Propagandist (TNP) to highlight the fact that it was the bloody junta of the Rawlings-Tsikata-led so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) that perfected the patently ungodly art of official corruption during the last 40 years. Why then has the Belgium-resident relentless and pathologically virulent critic of President Akufo-Addo, for example, kept a deathly silence over the Rawlings-established tradition of the wanton cannibalization or commandeering and privatization of state-owned houses? Is it because the key operatives of the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy are tin-gods who live well above the laws of our land? Indeed, in the Wood Supreme Court’s decision handed down in the landmark matter of Obetsebi-Lamptey vs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Omane-Boamah, the Supreme Court emphatically noted that the late Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey acted squarely within legal and statutory precedent, when the former National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and before the latter post Ghana’s Tourism Minister under President John Agyekum-Kufuor, decided to purchase state-owned real-estate and landed properties.

Ironically, it was the assigns of those who established this ungodly tradition of routinely and summarily expropriating state-owned properties on the cheap who took the late Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey to the highest court of the land, notably, including then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late. But, of course, this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. For instance, why is the Belgium-based half-Ghanaian journalist and ardent critic of Nana Akufo-Addo not talking about Chairman Jerry John Rawlings’ solicitation of a $ 5 Million (USD) payola from Nigeria’s Gen. Sani Abacha, late, as the price of Mr. Rawlings’ shameless undertaking of an international face-lifting propaganda work for the former, largely at the New York City Headquarters of the United Nations, in the glaring face of wanton atrocities perpetrated against the Nigerian people by the Abacha dictatorship?

Now, let us point out a few decisions taken in the wake of the Nyantakyi Affair, as it were, in order to fully expose the “Savage” man for the scamming pathological charlatan that he incontrovertibly is. One, it was President Akufo-Addo, and not any of the leaders of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who caused Mr. Nyantakyi to abort and/or abbreviate his official working-tour of Morocco in order to be questioned about the clearly incriminating contents of the Anas exposé. It was also Nana Akufo-Addo who caused the erstwhile Ghana Football Association to be effectively dissolved and reconstituted with the full and unreserved backing and cooperation of FIFA, the global soccer governing body. And so what is all this nonsense about the flat refusal of President Akufo-Addo to have Mr. Nyantakyi promptly and rigorously prosecuted for corruption? Indeed, what this virulent critic exhibits is the fact that apparently one can do genuine and professional journalism in King Leopold’s backyard without doing any thorough research or the sort of critical analysis upon which many a content of opinions expressed in the most visionary and the most progressive journalistic columns may be invariably based.

In short, had he conducted any modicum of decent and/or respectable research, the “Savage” man would have since long learned from Mr. Godfred Yeboah Odame (or ’Dame) that no laws presently exist for the prosecution of Ghanaian citizens like the former President of the Ghana Football Association because, in the law books governing our beloved nation, Mr. Nyantakyi is clearly classified as a “private citizen” who was in charge of administering a FIFA-sponsored independent, nongovernmental sporting establishment. In other words, traditionally speaking, Mr. Nyantakyi was never a “public official” in the political sense of the term. Is this legal pre-Akufo-Addo explanation too “rocket-sciency” for the “Savage” man to fully appreciate? And for both his personal information and professional enlightenment: as of this writing, the Attorney-General’s Office was in consultation with the Legislative Branch of Government, otherwise known as Parliament, to amend some of the laws pertaining to the regulation of Association Football and sports, in general, in the country, in order to make it possible for allegedly corrupt sports administrators like Mr. Nyantakyi, like many an ordinary Ghanaian citizen, to be rigorously and successfully prosecuted. Now, Mr. “Savage” man, where is President Akufo-Addo’s sin in this?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 31, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]