Baba JamalBaba Jamal, the former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Akyem-Akwatia, has every inalienable democratic right to harbor any sort of weird or bizarre loyalty and opinion about former President John Dramani Mahama. But the former Deputy Labor and Employment Minister has absolutely no right, whatsoever, to cavalierly presume to insult the intelligence and dignity of the indigenous people of Akwatia and Okyeman, in particular Akyem-Abuakwa (See “I’LL Defend Mahama’s Legacy with My Blood – Baba Jamal” Abusuafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/24/18).
I don’t know how much Mr. Jamal thinks that his blood may be worth, but it bears sternly pointing out to him that the township and people of Akyem-Akwatia and Akyem-Abuakwa owe him and his democratically ousted benefactor absolutely nothing! Akwatia is what it is today and has been in the past primarily because of the entrepreneurial genius of the traditional rulers of Okyeman with, of course, some remarkable contribution of the non-indigenes who settled in Akwatia township and its environs, because of the bountiful economic promise and sustenance that it beckoned to these “outsiders,” and not the other around.
If anything at all, it was the leaders of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), beginning with the party’s founding-father, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, the official Pandora’s Box Opener of the environmentally destructive and wantonly predatory Galamsey Industry, that criminally and effectively reduced Akyem-Akwatia to its present-day veritable ghost of its former economically vivacious and flourishing self. Now, let me make this point clear to him, that I bear absolutely no grudge or animosity against the former NDC-MP for Akyem-Akwatia, his widely established notoriety for gross mendacity and abject lack of credibility notwithstanding.
I have a deceased relative, Dr. Kwaku Asare, who was once the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for the Denkyembuor District and Constituency, and so it is not altogether as if the indigenes of Akyem-Akwatia ever abandoned their inalienable landed and property rights to that diamond and economic breadbasket of Ghana. Mr. Jamal should, first of all, take stock of the fact of why he and the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress lost the Akyem-Akwatia parliamentary seat, and tell the people of Akwatia and the rest of the country whether it was because of the flagrant ungratefulness or ingratitude of the indigenes and residents of Akwatia, or the abject lack of leadership responsibility on the part of National Democratic Congress’ operatives like the wantonly parasitic Mr. Jamal.
I mean, isn’t it a crying shame that Mr. Jamal would be presently talking about such basic and mundane infrastructural projects as roads in a township and a district that has given much more of its wealth and genius to the country and Ghana’s development than the Gonja and Bole-Bamboi birth township and constituency of former President John Dramani Mahama himself? And, oh, I forgot to add that had Dr. Kwaku Asare not so untimely and tragically perished in the road accident that snuffed the existential quickness out of him, he would very likely be the parliamentary incumbent for Akyem-Akwatia today, and possibly a cabinet appointee in the very progressive and forward-looking government of President Akufo-Addo. I very much doubt that the creation of the Denkyembuor District is the greatest thing that ever happened to the people of Akwatia and its environs.
I am pretty certain that Nana Akufo-Addo’s fee-free Senior High School policy initiative has more relevance and economic significance for the lives and people of Akyem-Akwatia than the mere demarcation of lands and forestry resources. Mr. Jamal may be too pathologically caught up in his own megalomania and political opportunism to realize that it was the predatory and economically parasitic divestment and divestiture policies of the leaders of the National Democratic Congress that precipitated the collapse of GIHOC, the Nkrumah-created Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation. And today, Ghana is decades behind the optimal level of its potential economic and technological development because of the inexcusably criminal and fiscally irresponsible policies of the faux-socialist regimes of the National Democratic Congress.
Baba Jamal should spare us his nonsensical talk of severance packages for laid-off employees of CAST (the former Consolidated African Selection Trust) and instead talk about sustainable development for the residents and indigenes of the Denkyembuor District.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 25, 2018
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
