NAPO Will Be an Unacceptable Character Liability for Bawumia

It is very obvious that University of Ghana’s Political Scientist Seidu Alidu is being diplomatic to a fault, when the Head of the Political Science Department at the nation’s oldest and foremost flagship tertiary academy poignantly and aptly questions why a private and a secret opinion survey conducted by the late Capt. (Ret) Kojo Tsikata-reconfigured National Investigations Bureau (NIB), or Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), to be certain, vis-à-vis the prospective or potential 2024 Presidential Running-Mate of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia publicly envisaged to be the most formidable among the party-approved pool of candidates, was curiously leaked to the media well ahead of any official announcement of any such final selection by either Candidate Bawumia himself or the officially designated New Patriotic Party’s spokesperson (See “NPP running mate: Leakage of NIB survey worrying – Seidu Alidu ” Modernghana.com 6/19/24).

Now, the real and the most logical question to ask here is the following: Precisely when did the BNI/NIB become an integral arm or subsidiary of the institutional and the political or the structural establishment of the ruling New Patriotic Party? Of course, it is an unarguable fact that the New Patriotic Party is the governing institutional establishment of the country; but it is also equally true that the New Patriotic Party is definitely not one and the same as the statutory and nonpartisan institutions of our government. In other words, what we clearly see here is an egregious breach and a wanton abuse of power by the Akufo-Addo Jubilee House and/or the key operatives of the party’s establishment at its Kokomlemle Headquarters, in ways that have hitherto and traditionally only been routinely associated with the scofflaw and the autocratic leadership of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress, such as was witnessed during the Mills-Mahama tenure and the infamous Bus-Branding Episode, that led to the prompt and the severe sanctioning of the prime suspects involved, as Sincerely Yours vividly recalls.

Now, precisely when did the former Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), briefly renamed the Ghana Police Force (GPF), become an opinion-polling arm or establishment of either of our two major political parties in the country? There is something decidedly stinky and fishy here. Even more significantly, we need to also boldly an uncompromisingly put on record here that we have voluntarily by choice quietly, but not unconcernedly or disinterestedly, watched those “Neo-Primitive Cultural Comedians” who recently thought that they could play some cheap ethno-micro-tribal-nationalist politics with the process of the election and/or the selection of the Presidential Running-Mate of the very same Vice-President Bawumia, whom these same “Neo-Primitive Cultural Comedians” fiercely opposed for some two drawn-out electoral seasons or just under a decade as an unacceptably political and ideological “Outsider” of the then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, do a morally lurid and revoltingly orgiastic ritual libation at the graveside of the late Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, on behalf of a particular candidate of widely agreed questionable character, almost shamelessly as if the legendary Oxbridge and the University of London-educated Sociologist cum Cultural Anthropologist had been the best or the most progressive leader in the postcolonial Ghana of his time.

On the preceding very painful recollection, we firmly think and believe that it is perfectly in order to sternly caution Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia against any temptation to facilely commit political suicide in perpetuity by scandalously kowtowing to the pathologically self-serving and the morally unprepossessingly parochial ambitions of the very Fifth-Column Cabal of temporally intransigent “Constitutional Monarchists” who so cunningly and deviously and, Dear Reader, you guessed right, venomously sabotaged Dr. Bawumia’s well-deserved presidential ambitions in the recent past, to firmly put his two feet on the ground and decide the choice of his own Running-Mate or, sooner than later, have himself to blame. After all, any liabilities that result from his wrongful choice of a Presidential Running-Mate will be squarely and strictly held against the former Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Ghana, and not either the topmost leadership of the New Patriotic Party, including the so-called Eminent Party Leaders and the National Executive Council or Committee and those who are fiercely fighting to have one of their kinsmen or tribesmen look over his shoulders in a near-certain Bawumia Jubilee House. You see, the government that he will be forming, Divine Providence permitting, will be called the Mahamudu Bawumia Government or Administration, and he will be held unreservedly accountable for anything and everything done or not done by the men and the women that he picks to help him steer our wobbly and heavily listing Ship-of-State.

I have been unflappably convicted in my principled stance and decision to staunchly back the New Patriotic Party, even when such decision often did not seem to be the most ideologically and politically savvy thing to do. I have done more than my fair share of sitting up years of sleepless nights fiercely defending mortally flawed characters like the now lame-duck President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and, before the latter, the equally flawed former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor, and even the clinically narcissistic Kennedy “Akom-Prigozhin” Ohene Agyapong when I thought he was doing something for the greater long-term good of my motherland, and literally put my very life on the line for absolutely nothing but to ensure that my beloved country of birth and upbringing would be governed by the very best even among a largely mediocre pool of professional politicians and a minuscule number of unimpeachably patriotic statesmen and women.

And trust me, if these diehard mischief-makers ever so slightly attempt to unduly influence the selection of Vice-President Bawumia’s choice of his own desired Running-Mate, such as scurrilously and underhandedly having the Bureau of National Investigations converted into a bogus and a self-serving polling establishment, against common sense and fair play, we would be left with absolutely no other choice or alternative but to permanently depart camp. Our Akan sages have a saying that: “It is the one who climbs a good tree, who is also afforded a good boost or push.” Trust me, there will be certain Hell to pay, if these greedy political bastards do not back off pronto! If your clansman has been ill-raised and trained, you simply cannot make him our collective liability. Accept your parental failure and let the rest of us find a better choice and move on with our lives. Simple as that! Or, still better yet, you can join The Butterfly Party.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
June 20, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]