Kwaku Baako Is Not Guilty By Association

Our attention has been drawn to a reference made to Mr. Kwaku Baako in an article titled “Professor Aidoo, Mr. Baako, Speak for Yourselves!” which was posted to the Ghanaweb.com edition of April 7, 2007. The same article was also published on the website of Modernghana.com.

In the main, the allusion was to an earlier article published in The Ghanaian Observer of February 19, 2007, in which the writer attempted to impugn the dignity and integrity of Dr. J. B. Danquah vis-à-vis our righteous campaign to have the University of Ghana renamed “J. B. Danquah University of Ghana.”

In our rejoinder, we attributed the article, cynically and irreverently titled “J. B. Danquah University or University of J. B. Danquah?” to Mr. Kwaku Baako, editor of The Crusading Guide and son of the late Mr. Kofi Baako, a cabinet member of the Nkrumah government. The younger Mr. Baako has E-mailed us back to vehemently deny that he has anything to do with either the writing or the publishing of the aforementioned article which appeared in The Ghanaian Observer of February 19, 2007.

Mr. Baako, however, acknowledges the fact that The Ghanaian Observer “alongside [of] three other newspapers, namely, The Daily Dispatch, Gye Nyame Concord and The Crusading Guide are, indeed, published on the premises of “KOFI BAAKO'S RESIDENCE at North Labone Estates. Furthermore, Mr. Baako notes, regarding the aforementioned papers, that their “…locational address, purely residential, has absolutely nothing to do with the operational and editorial responsibility and even ownership of the various newspapers under [sic] reference. This is public knowledge within the Ghanaian media and public circles.”

If the preceding observations have legitimacy, in terms of factual validity, then, as we have already indicated in two E-mail exchanges with Mr. Baako, needless to say, we unreservedly apologize to the editor of The Crusading Guide.

But we also hope that Mr. Baako and our readers would appreciate our inadvertent error of judgment in attributing the authorship of the patently and scandalously anti-Danquah and anti-Okyeman article to The Crusading Guide editor.

Mr. Baako also tells us that The Ghanaian Observer is edited by a Monsieur Egbert Faibille, and that the author of the analytically pretentious column in which the article seeking to vilify the integrity and dignity of Dr. Danquah appeared, sports the pseudonym of “PETER THE WHALER.” We hope that the latter masquerader has now been put on full alert that any dastardly attempt on his part to vilify the putative and undisputed Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics would be fiercely riposted.

We pretty much concur with Mr. Baako, at least in principle, that “it would be imprudent and even unethical [to disclose] the real identity of the author of that COLUMN even if I knew [it].” We only hope that the next time that “PETER THE WHALER” decides to throw spitballs, like the kindergarten brat that he definitely is, vis-à-vis his critical-thinking skills, he would not forget to sign off in/with his real name.

We are also appreciative of the fact, even as he personally and emphatically stated in one of his three E-mails, that Mr. Baako unreservedly agrees with our righteous campaign to have the University of Ghana renamed “J. B. Danquah University of Ghana.” It is an admirable mark of
patriotic citizenship on Mr. Baako's part.

Ultimately, while we make no pretensions regarding how Monsieur Egbert Faibille ought to run his Ghanaian Observer post (no pun intended, of course), nonetheless, having studiously followed his thin-skinned attitude towards other media operatives whose professional practice the editor of The Ghanaian Observer appears to deem personally offensive, we have every reason to expect that Monsieur Faibille would be very mindful of any professionally scandalous pieces of writing which appear on his editorial desk pretending to pass for respectable or even analytically puissant Ghanaian journalism. Needless to say, we shall be religiously watching!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana.” E-mail: [email protected].