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21.04.2020 Feature Article

Is Ghanaweb Afraid of the Rawlingses and the NDC?

Is Ghanaweb Afraid of the Rawlingses and the NDC?
21.04.2020 LISTEN

It is a shame that those who claim to uphold the highest ethical standards in Ghana’s media are actually those who are cowardly, morbidly and pathologically blind to the same. I mean, why do the editors, publishers and/or webmasters of the country’s oldest and foremost social media portal so scandalously fail to realize that if, today, the quality of Ghana’s media fare woefully fails to meet the most ordinary standards of journalistic practice, this is primarily and indubitably because of the “revolutionary” terrorist tactics introduced into the mainstream of our national media, both public and private, by the Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led juntas of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and in particular the Rawlings-Tsikata diarchy of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC)? – (See “Paul Adom-Otchere: The ‘Representational Agency’ of a Failed State?” Ghanaweb.com 4/21/20).

If the editorialist(s)who wrote and published the aforementioned piece of rancid trash had bothered to compare notes or check their facts with the luminary likes of Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, the former Editor of the Daily Graphic; Mr. Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako; Ms. Adjoa Yeboah-Afari; and a host of other experienced living Ghanaian media legends, both from the print and the electronic media, they would not have so royally embarrassed themselves and the rest of us with such flagrant mendacity. In all likelihood, the obviously wet-eared editorialist(s) who penned and published the piece of pabulum under discussion here never heard the names of Messrs. John Kugblenu, Kofi Batsa and Tommy Thompson, as well as the “indomitable and junketing” firebrand and, for quite a while, unarguably the Dean of Hard-Hitting Ghanaian Journalists, namely, Mr. Chris Asher. You see, these local media giants lived and practiced their veritable watchdog art under what the late Prof. Albert A. Adu-Boahen candidly and courageously described as the “Culture of Silence.”

And that abysmal era of wanton media terrorism did not prevail under the equally extortionate Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) regime. Yes, you guessed right, Dear Reader, it prevailed right here in Ghana and under the dictatorial tenure of the payola-soliciting Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, the retired strongman and sometimes errand boy of Nigeria’s Gen. Sani Abacha, late, who still scandalously persists in celebrating the most bogus Butchers’ Revolution on the African Continent in the late 20th Century. You see, a “failed state” is when High Court Judges could be easily abducted from the sanctum of their homes in the middle of the night and summarily and savagely executed, Mafia-style, because they just happen to belong to the wrong ethnic group in the country. Or, worse yet, be executed just for taking professionally sound and conscientious decisions from the bench that the lethal purveyors of the Trokosi Nationalist Revolution deemed not to gibe with the terrorist ethics of the Western Togoland Gang of Butchers and Nation-Wreckers.

Indeed, if the editorial writers of the Ghanaweb.com Media Portal truly believed in culturally refined and civilized journalistic praxis, they would long have called out the morally untenable fact of Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings’ having been forced onto the good and responsible people of the Klottey-Korle Constituency, in Accra-Central, by the Sogakope Mafia Generalissimo, with the servile lock-stepping bush-boy from the dusty streets of Bono-Seikwa – my profound apologies to Rev.-Dr. Gyan-Duah, of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, and the rest of the well-meaning people of Bono-Seikwa – Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nektia, the long-serving dynastic General-Secretary of the Rawlings-bought-and-paid-for veritable terrorist organization called the National Democratic Congress. That is what qualitative journalists do – call the shots when they see gross misbehavior without fear or favor.

You see, real and genuine journalists are those who practice their art by the courage of their convictions and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. And, oh, if the editors of the Ghanaweb.com Media Portal, in particular those who authored and published the rancid piece of poppycock under scrutiny, really cared to know the truth about the veritable sham that was Ghanaian journalism under the watch of Chairman Agbotui-John, they ought to have consulted with the likes of Mr. Kojo Yankah before so haughtily presuming to take on an issue and a subject-matter over which they had absolutely no clue. Then also, just why did the Ghanaweb.com operatives only began republishing my articles by migrating them from other media portals – for my email addresses have been effectively blocked by Ghanaweb.com for close to five years now – only well after President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo catastrophically trounced his National Democratic Congress’ political archnemesis and became the substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana? A failed state, indeed!

And just when did these media goofballs come to the morally refreshing and sobering realization that, indeed, Ghana offered a classic example of The Failed State?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 21, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]

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