Kennedy Agyapong Should Steer Clear of IMF-World Bank Propaganda Spiel

He has done as much, together with his buddy and mentee A-Plus (aka Kwame Asare-Obeng), to malign and severely undermine the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), largely on baseless accusations of rank corruption at the Presidency, when the present administration was scarcely a year old. So, Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong cannot pretend as if the recent IMF-World Bank alarm bells on the state of Ghana’s economy are wholly coming out of the blue, as it were (See “ ‘Corrupt’ World Bank, IMF Want Akufo-Addo to Fail – Ken Agyapong” MyNewsGh.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/27/19). It was also not the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), by the way, that came out with the report claiming that the PDS-ECG Scandal had the heavy imprints of the fingers of some heavyweights of the Akufo-Addo administration on it. You see, foreign diplomats have been able to interfere in the internal affairs of our country, especially in the area of rank official corruption, primarily because NPP stalwarts like the Assin-Central Member of Parliament have been supplying these “foreign observers” with the requisite munitions via reckless and rampant and intemperate media effusions.

What is more, every reasonably well-educated Ghanaian citizen and resident of the so-called Third World is fully aware of the fact that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, or the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), were primarily established to succor to the economic needs of the NATO countries and their closest allies in the apocalyptic aftermath of World-War II; so it is absolutely pointless for Mr. Agyapong to so facilely presume to flog a dead horse, as it were. indeed, prominent Africans like the late Prof. Adeyemi Adedeji and Prof. Chinua Achebe, both of Nigeria, as well as a former Governor of the Bank of Tanzania whose name I cannot readily recall, have since long gone on the record to have advised most Third-World countries, especially the lumpen-poor countries of Africa, to steer clear of the neocolonialist agenda of the Bretton-Woods Establishment. So, there is absolutely no new revelation here.

On the other hand, what we direly need here as both Ghanaians and Africans is the imperative need to exercise self-restraint, fiscal discipline and a keen sense of patriotism of the kind that has been sorely lacking among major local socioeconomic and political players like Mr. Agyapong, who risibly appear to think and believe that, somehow, they have a bounden obligation to wash the government’s dirty linen in public but that following the same tack on the part of foreign diplomats resident in the country is a no-go area. No such logic could be more preposterous.

It is also patently absurd to wedge President Kwame Nkrumah into the equation, because we all know that his progressive Pan-Africanist ideals and all, Mr. Nkrumah woefully failed to live up to the expectations of the Ghanaian people who offered him the mandate to be able to represent both Ghana and Africa on the global stage. The fact of the matter is that Ghana’s first postcolonial leader did not need to be petulantly picking fights and battles that he perfectly knew he could not win with and against the Americans and the rest of the erstwhile proto-imperialist West. It also goes without saying that Nkrumah could have done far better for Ghana by concentrating his efforts more on the development of his home turf. Indeed, even as Kenya’s Prof. Ali A. Mazrui, late, once poignantly observed, Nkrumah was definitely a great African leader, perhaps even the greatest African leader of the second-half of the Twentieth Century, but unquestionably a very bad Ghanaian ruler and politician.

Now, what two-timing political party stalwarts like Mr. Agyapong ought to be doing is to be intensely focused on helping the Akufo-Addo government develop the country, instead of mischievously and counterproductively playing referee and team member at the same time when it suits his ego and personal interests. Ultimately, the problem with the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party is the perennial problem of complacency and a relatively weak and poorly coordinated communication machine. In short, instead of worrying needlessly about vacuous and self-serving propaganda sandbagging strategically fed into the media mainstream by the Bretton-Woods Establishment, key party players like the KenCity Media Network proprietor must be focused on promoting the landmark policy initiatives and the unprecedently phenomenal achievements of the New Patriotic Party.

The corruption fight also needs to be further toughened up. And then we can begin to comfortably look forward to being returned to Jubilee House come December 2020. Paranoia and desperation ought not to become a central plank of our electioneering campaign platform and/or agenda.

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

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