What Is “Oppression of Freedom,” Manasseh Azure?

In his write-up on the arrests of the two Modernghana.com journalists, namely, Messrs. Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri, Editor, and Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum, Reporter, Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni, of the Multimedia Group, operatives of Joyonline.com websites and other communications networks across the length and breadth of the country, appears to be so hell-bent on maligning and demonizing the National Security Apparatus under the governance of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, that the award-winning Senior Correspondent of Joy-News ends up committing several Freudian Slips – or Parapraxis – that rather scandalously and strikingly reflect the all-too-predictable fact that Mr. Awuni is on an unconscionably cold-calculated mission of denigrating the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), than the acerbic critic is about the inviolable, sacred and godly journalistic business of ferreting out the truth of what really happened to the two Modern Ghana media operatives, when Messrs. Abugri and Britwum were, reportedly, picked up by agents from the National Security Council (NSC) several days ago, allegedly, for questions having to do with hacking into the email accounts and other electronic information storage and retrieval systems of rivals at several other media establishments, in a mischievous and criminal bid to scooping the latter, mostly in regard to the selfish and callous dissemination of information damning to the image and reputation of powerful politicians like Mr. Albert Kan Dapaah, the Minister of National Security, and the ruling New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Effutu Constituency and the Winneba Municipality, namely, Mr. Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin.

Anyway, in the third paragraph from the bottom of his rather desultory and outrageously incoherent article captioned “Manasseh Writes” (Modernghana.com 7/1/19), the Joy-News’ Senior Correspondent pontifically, if also smugly, asserts that “Oppression of free speech is one of the worst things Ghanaians can experience under [the leadership of] a president who is touted as a human rights champion.” We must quickly point out, as well, that this “solecistic” or offensive usage of language is obviously meant to facilely pass off deliberately orchestrated hyperbole as a fundamental and objective representation of the reality on the ground. This patently disingenuous deployment of language speaks more volumes about the thoroughgoing bankrupt credibility of the writer and notorious Akufo-Addo critic than anything else. Let’s face it, when did anybody anywhere in the world hear about any such thing as the “Oppression of Free Speech”? I suppose what the morbidly virulent Akufo-Addo critic wanted to say but pathetically lacked the felicitous rhetorical flair to poignantly articulate was the “Suppression of Free Speech.” You see, the demonic reification or deliberate personification of the fundamentally abstract, albeit politically and practically palpable, concept of “oppression” and “suppression” by the pathologically hard driving, crusading and self-deifying, to speak less about the inescapably delusional Mr. Awuni, as one commentator and critic recently put it, clearly points to the obstreperous or uncontrollable hatred that the wannabe self-deprecating “watchman’s son” incontrovertibly harbors for President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Indeed, scarcely two months ago, Mr. Awuni wrote to the general Ghanaian public that so existentially endangered had he become under the watch of Nana Akufo-Addo’s Ghana that he had been, literally, forced to flee the country in desperate defense and protection of his life. That was after he had so shamefully and unsuccessfully pulled that Osu-Castle scam of a national security exposé. I learned from a reliable informant recently that Mr. Awuni had, indeed, left the country briefly to live in, of all havens for West African indigenes, South Africa. Literally, from the skillet or frying pan to the naked fire itself! That is also another of the legion lies that exposes Mr. Awuni for the congenital liar that he inescapably appears to be. Nobody should be surprised if it turns out that his brief South African exile was a gift from his paymaster, Mr. Kwasi Twum, for Mr. Awuni to let off some of the 4,000-degree steam roiled up by his Osu-Castle media scam. Now, all of a sudden, a direly endangered Mr. Awuni has emerged from the sprawling Kokomlemle studios of the Multimedia Group haughtily and comfortably hurling spitballs at the very insufferably “oppressive” President Akufo-Addo, whom this endangered species of humanity stridently claims to have voraciously been after his very life and blood all this while.

Then also, in the very first sentence of his article pompously captioned “Manasseh Azure Writes,” the newly converted John Dramani Mahama lapdog claims that he has spoken to Messrs. Abugri and Britwum (My Dear Reader: look out for my follow-up to the present column in a day or two), and that these two hardworking gentlemen claim to have been “seriously [severely?] tortured”? Now, the most logical question worth asking by any critical thinker is the following: Precisely how could any alleged criminal suspects, at least according to a memo statement released by operatives of the National Security Council at the time of this writing, be “jovially tortured”? You see, what is inescapably clear here is the fact that somebody is not levelling up with the general Ghanaian public. And that somebody, of course, shares more striking resemblance with Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni than anybody else on either side of our national media terrain and our national political circles.

We also need to remind the recently penitent and contrite Mahama lapdog that in the wake of the scandalous road-accident death of “Ghanaian Times’” reporter, Mr. Samuel Nuamah, about four years ago, it was not Mr. Kan Dapaah or any of his present lieutenants from the National Security Council establishment who was widely reported by the media to have mauled senseless the young Radio News Reporter on the staff of our national broadcaster, to wit, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). Rather, it was a highly placed staff appointee of the Mahama Presidency called Mr. Stanislav Dogbe, the man who was also widely mentioned by the police to the media in the wake of the arrests of the criminal suspects in the brutal early-morning stabbing-assassination of the then Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa North and grandson of the legendary Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, to wit, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah, the erudite Nkrumah mentor whose prison death has been widely and credibly alleged by expert forensics scientists and inquest investigators to have been deliberately ordered by President Kwame Nkrumah.

Mr. Awuni may also want to exhaustively review the human rights records of both the leaders of the National Democratic Congress and the ruling New Patriotic, where professional media practice and the general treatment of our journalists are concerned, even as we, the general Ghanaian public, wait, with bated breaths, for the truth behind the chain of events leading to the arrests and detentions of Messrs. Abugri and Britwum.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
July 2, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]