Akufo-Addo Floors His iWatch and Ghanaian Detractors

To hear opposition politicians like Nana Oye Lithur and her male associates of Ghana’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) wax self-righteous and eloquent about the “bloated” cabinet of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), you would think that the latter was packed with some 110 cabinet appointees, and not the 19 cabinet ministers that the iWatch Africa rights watchdog organization claims to be the actual size of the Akufo-Addo cabinet or government. Well, when the iWatch headcounters could not come up with the 19^th cabinet appointee, they decided to fudge it by shoving into place a male deputy cabinet appointee at the bottom of the table listing the Akufo-Addo cabinet members. Now, let’s talk about truth and integrity (See “Fact-Check: Akufo-Addo’s Claim Women Make Up 30% of His Cabinet False – iWatch Africa” Modernghana.com 6/8/19).

The Communications Department of the New Patriotic Party ought to jump on the iWatch figure regarding the actual size of the Akufo-Addo cabinet to enable Ghanaian citizens and eligible voters to fully appreciate the seismic difference between the cold-calculated propagandistic campaign of disinformation by the key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress and the true size of the Akufo-Addo cabinet. The latter strategic tack makes perfect sense, in view of the fact that the NDC media operatives clearly appear to have absolutely no qualms with the figure of 19 Akufo-Addo cabinet appointees rolled out by the iWatch Africa watchdogs. It is also significant to observe that the Canadian-born Libyan-descended women’s rights advocate, the 30-year-old physician by the name of Dr. Alaa Murabit, has Libyan-born parents who grew up in a country where women have for centuries been held in a kind of socioeconomic and political subjection or servitude that has been practically unknown among the women of the Akan majority population of Ghana.

So, it is quite understandable that Dr. Murabit, who appears to have partly lived or grown up in Muammar Kaddhafy’s Libya, has a totally different experience than the kind of relatively more liberal cultural environment and climate in which the overwhelming majority of Akan-descended Ghanaian women grew up. I am compelled to make the foregoing observation because as a matrilineal society, with strong political or decision-making input by women, the treatment and respect for the dignity of Akan women throughout precolonial antiquity have always been significantly better and more relatively enlightened than what prevailed in the non-matrilineal societies and ethnic polities throughout the African continent. At any rate, it is patently false for the iWatch Africa watchdog organization to assert that President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s cabinet has only 26-percent representation of women, unless one also deliberately discounts the cardinal portfolio of Ms. Alima Mahama, the Minister for Local Government and Rural Development.

Nana Akufo-Addo actually slightly downplayed the percentage of women represented in his cabinet. The figure is 31-percent, and not the 30-percent that the President trotted out at the Vancouver conference. And this is quite a big deal, in view of the conspiratorial and collusive attempt to kick a fuss over the fact of whether, indeed, the Akufo-Addo cabinet is 26-percent composed of women and not the 30-percent presented at the “Women Deliver” conference. Just when these unconscionable scam-artists thought they had the President of Ghana gasping for breath on the canvas, almost as if from out of nowhere, the unvarnished truth smacks these rascals and their mischief-making dynamism-challenged and morally bereft female co-conspirators and ambuscaders up their boobs and balls. Then again, who said God was not on our side?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 8, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]