Nobody Painted You Black, Mr. Akilu Sayibu, You Are Already Black!

We clashed once or twice on the question of the steady and inexorable character assassination of the then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo by the irredeemable and irrecoverably defeated Idiot-of-Irmo, South Carolina, the pathologically presumptuous political scumbag and certificate-for-hire medical practitioner who once served as Communications Director, or some such designation, for the 2008 Akufo-Addo Presidential Campaign. The subject of this column also ran, once, for the elective post of Member of Parliament for one of the three Tamale parliamentary seats, on the ticket of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and lost miserably. So, I was not the least bit surprised that he eventually got fired as Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), after barely a year in office. Maybe his appointment was a way for his benefactors at party headquarters or even Jubilee House to express their gratitude for the couple of articles he had written and published for both the New Patriotic Party and the Akufo-Addo Presidential Campaign in the frenetic leadup to the 2016 General Election.

At any rate, I have yet to receive my laptop for, literally, working around-the-clock to ensure that the now-President Akufo-Addo resoundingly realized his political ambition of getting elected as President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana. Of course, I write this column in reference to the news story captioned “ ‘I Didn’t Carry Any Laptop Away’ – Former GEPA Deputy CEO Replies Auditor-General” (Modernghana.com 6/24/19). It is said somewhere in the Christian Bible, in one of the famous parables that “Many are called but few are chosen.” Some of us, by the way, were duly and promptly called but, for various reasons, both personal and political, we turned our call down. Well, it clearly appears that Mr. Akilu Sayibu was one of the many who were called but definitely not among those permanently chosen to assist in the facilitation of the rapid and efficient development of the country in the long-haul.

But, of course, it can also not be gainsaid that at least unlike yours truly, Mr. Sayibu gave himself the remarkable chance of honorably serving his country as best as he could, irrespective of the fact that he had been “dishonorably” discharged or relieved of his duties. The only problem here, though, is the fact that he does not appear to have been as serviceable as he thought he was or as administratively competent as he had believed himself to be. And so he was promptly afforded the proverbial heave-ho. Nevertheless, I still feel that personnel from the Auditor-General’s Department could have done a far better job than make themselves appear to have callously and cynically rubbed alligator-pepper into the still-bleeding sore of the recently dismissed Deputy GEPA CEO, when these staff appointees of the Auditor-General’s Department, having allegedly noted the fact of Mr. Sayibu’s having used some of his severance paycheck to purchase and keep his officially issued laptop, would still rather insensitively go ahead and publish an audit report scandalously accusing Mr. Sayibu of theft, while NDC’s underwriter and Mega-Thieve, to wit, Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, comfortably traipses the length and breadth of our beloved nation literally thumbing his nose at the Ghanaian taxpayer.

Well, Mr. Sayibu says that he had written a memorandum to the effect that he intended to keep his officially issued laptop, because he had stored a humongous amount of personal data on the same and did not wish to make same available to his successor. Now, of course, that is all well and good, except that the plaintiff did not help himself, when in deciding to respond to news reports charging him with theft, actually petty thievery, that is, compared to Mr. Woyome’s Mega-Heist, Mr. Akilu Sayibu had evidently not found it to be both politically and morally expedient enough to also republish the memo of his statutorily sanctioned decision to keep his officially issued laptop to the immediate successor of his former boss, namely, the substantive Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, Ms. Afua Asabea Asare. That would have promptly put paid to any doubts in the minds of his audience. Now, as it stands, one does not really know what or who to believe, that is, the Auditor-General’s Report, or the man who seems to be fiercely fighting to retain whatever may be left of his image and reputation.

You see, gross incompetence of the sort which, reportedly, precipitated the dismissal of Mr. Sayibu and his former boss, is far more corrosive and indelible than the mere fact of him being hit with an accusation or charge that may not be deemed to have any forensically sustainable validity in a court of law at all, because it has also already been captured in the Auditor-General’s Report. Now, what is far more significant and morally meaningful, is for the self-proclaimed victim or target of vilification to seek redress by, first, finding out about the leaker of such image- and reputation-damning “mendacity.” And then the “Honorable” Mr. Sayibu would perfectly be within his rights of hitting the leaker where it is bound to hurt the most – his/her wallet/wallets.

Now, as for his cognitively jarring accusation of the media’s having painted Mr. Sayibu “Black,” about all we can say is to suggest to the palpably livid Mr. Sayibu that all he needs to do is to look himself up in the mirror and see whether he has really been painted “Black” or he, somehow, simply finds it extremely difficult to practically come to terms with exactly who he inescapably is, a Black-African Ghanaian citizen non-pareil. “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep….”

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 27, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]