Cut this Nonsense, Trokosi Political Analyst

It has often been said that: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first puff up with pride.” It well appears that the reprobate operatives of Ghana’s opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) are about to have their wish in the evidently adamant and strategically inadvisable selection of Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the Pakyi Number Two-born widely rumored son of the late Nana Sir Osei-Agyemang Prempeh, II, as the 2024 Presidential Running-Mate of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia. I have already expressed my utter displeasure in a previous column and intend to do so again in several more articles to follow suit soon. For now, though, let me crave the patently unearned trust and indulgence of the Dear Reader to assert that any strategically savvy party stalwart looking to be provided with an accurate and a professionally credible prognosis, vis-à-vis the most appealing Running-Mate Candidate to partner the widely presumed Next President of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, would definitely not latch on to the patently treacherous analysis of an Anlo-Ewe descended self-proclaimed political analyst located or resident in the Volta Region to boot.

We are here, of course, alluding to Mr. Nicolas Gborse, who has been reported by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) as having “wildly” suggested that a National Intelligence Bureau (NIB)-concocted opinion poll putting the Manhyia-South Member of Parliament, Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh – aka Napo – well ahead of a pack of at least a half-dozen potential Running-Mate Candidates for Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia is the most reliable opinion-poll survey to watch (See “NPP Running mate: 'Napo' could be a threat to political parties — Political Analyst” Modernghana.com 6/21/24).

As I told a long-time acquaintance the other day, having the NIB or the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) conduct an opinion poll to determine which Asante-native stalwart of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) best qualifies to partner Dr. Bawumia into the heated and watershed 2024 Presidential Election, is like the ruling Democratic Party (DP) of the United States of America commissioning either the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) or, better yet, the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to determine who best qualifies to partner a fast-aging and visibly frail President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., into the upcoming November 2024 US Presidential Election, that is, in the absence of Vice-President Kamala Harris.

First of all, the FBI and/or the CIA are not traditionally known to be opinion-polling establishments, although from time to time either national security institutional establishment could commission renowned and expert polling establishments such as Marist and Quinnipiac colleges to conduct national-security related opinion surveys. Currently, my undergraduate nephew, Mr. Samuel Odoi-Sykes, II, is a student intern at the National Polling Center at Quinnipiac College, in Hamden, Connecticut. In the case of the NIB/BNI-conducted opinion poll in Ghana, it is not clear why the selection of a Running-Mate to partner Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has anything necessarily significant to do with our national security, short of all half-dozen pool of proposed candidates having been fingered for being a serious threat to the security of the country, for reasons that have yet to be made public to Ghanaian citizens and the electorate.

Now, it is beginning to eerily dawn on me that, indeed, the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party are very capable of rigging up the 2024 General Election, in particular the 2024 Presidential Election, as is being widely suggested by the National Democratic Congress’ apparatchiks, to favor their most preferred top-ticket candidates. My pet aversion for the leadership of the latter political establishment is already globally known. Nevertheless, I will not hesitate to strictly call it like it is, if I strongly believe that the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election has been rigged to favor the ruling party. Trust me, there will be Hell to pay, if the Alexander Afenyo-Markinses and the Akyem and the Asante Mafia Capos do not come clean on the very devious and invidiously prejudicial selection of Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh as the 2024 Vice-Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party.

Even so, the two criteria upon which Mr. Nicolas Gborse, the so-called Political Analyst in the Volta Region, predicates his reason for claiming that Napo is the most fetching candidate to partner with Dr. Bawumia into the 2024 Presidential Election holds absolutely no water, as it were. It is like the proverbial wicker fish trap being used to fetch water for cooking in the Pre-Galamsey era. It simply does not wash or stand to reason. First of all, there is absolutely no officially accepted evidence indicating that, indeed, it was Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh who originally mooted or proposed the very historically unprecedented idea of the implementation of a Fee-Free Secondary Education System in the country, as is being mischievously suggested in some party quarters and circles.

Secondly, even as Yours Truly has emphasized times ad-nauseam, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology-educated medical doctor and, some claim, surgeon, critically lacks the relevant professional expertise of the former Deputy Education Minister, namely, Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, the renowned US-trained Curriculum Design Expert and Distinguished Academic Administrator and the man who actually did most of the kind of groundwork that facilitated the practical implementation of the Fee-Free Senior High, Vocational, Technical and the STEM Education Curriculum and made the latter the reality on the ground that it has become. Which was also why Yours Truly wrote and published reams of book-length articles and media columns requesting that the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, name Dr. Osei-Adutwum the substantive Education Minister.

Thirdly, and contrary to what the Trokosi Nationalist Political Analyst, Mr. Nocolas Gborse, presumably and stereotypically a bona fide apparatchik of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress, would have his primary audience of diehard and fanatical NDC supporters believe, as Energy Minister, Dr. Opoku-Prempeh has actually created an irreparable political disaffection for both himself and the ruling New Patriotic Party by his Pakyi-like rustic and behaviorally unpolished manners and his immitigably offensive issuance of strategically unguarded remarks of the kind routinely and infamously associated with the Serial and the Dynastic Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “Brazil Embraer Caper” Dramani Mahama vis-à-vis critical national concerns regarding the creation of a definitive solution for Dumsor, the perennially erratic supply of power or energy in the country.

Like the insufferably presumptuous Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” (Nkonfem-Kanazoe) Dramani Mahama, Dr. Opoku-Prempeh has tended to behave as if his grossly incompetent management of Dumsor were actually a benevolent and a magnanimous favor for which adversely affected Ghanaian citizens, entrepreneurs and workers at all industrial levels ought to be eternally grateful. Now, except for Mr. Nicolas Gborse and his politically desperate and cold-calculating associates and fanatics of the Social Darwinian “Cash-and-Carry” policies of the faux-socialist and populist operatives of the National Democratic Congress, who really envisages the most vulnerable and strategically unprepossessing Running-Mate Candidate like the Manhyia-South MP as the most electorally threatening potential Bawumia Running-Mate to watch?

Like it or not, Alhaji Mahamudu “Issaka?” Bawumia is the Real Deal going into the 2024 Presidential Election. And, of course, the Real Threat to the Jubilee House ambitions of Kwame Gonja and the National Democratic Congress is Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, and not Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh. Trust me, Dear Reader, we have done all the necessary calculations, that is, the additions and the subtractions to arrive at this most well-considered decision. Remember, 89-percent of the same opinion poll survey conducted by Ghana’s equivalent of the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigations that had Dr. Opoku-Prempeh leading by 76-percent, also had respondents saying that they couldn’t care less about a Napo Vice-Presidency. A word to the wise….

*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 23, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]