Ghanascope

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            I read Mr. Kwesi Pratt’s intemperate vitriol against the British High Commissioner to Ghana, as usual, with amused contempt and even wondered whether this 50-something career rabble-rouser would ever mature beyond emotional adolescence. For starters, we learn that Dr. Nicholas Westcott had participated in a public lecture organized by the Public Affairs Directorate of the University of Ghana (more…)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            There is absolutely nothing wrong for President John Evans Atta-Mills to invite the leadership of the Christian Council of Ghana to his Osu-Castle office in order to broach matters of conscience and ethics. However, his rather facile and at once brazen attempt to get the established Christian Church of Ghana to institute an annual week of prayer flagrantly violates his constitutional role as President of the august Republic of Ghana (See “National Prayer Day: Prez Seeks Support of Clergy” MyJoyOnline.com 1/30/10). (more…)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            A Nigerian federal high court judge tonight (1/29/10) dismissed a plaint by some leading members of the country’s bar association aimed at forcing ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua to hand over the reins of governance to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan. (more…)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            He may, indeed, not be a card-carrying member of the rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP) of whose original brand, a veritable offshoot of the Danquah-led United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), his father (Mr. Kofi Baako) served as its most eloquent, albeit barely coherent, chief ideologue and spokesman (See “I’m Not a Card-Bearing Member of the CPP – Kweku Baako” Ghanaweb.com 1/28/10). (more…)

By: Eric Kwasi Bottah (alias Oyokoba)

 On January 30, 2010, I read an article on Ghanaweb that got me shaking my head in bewilderment. The said article was written by one M. Dade Bonsu, titled: President Mills Has Been Hoodwinked And Bamboozled By Rawlings. The responses and comments it garnered were very pugnacious. Words have edges and can be sharp like knives. In fact most inter-tribal conflicts have started, not first by gun fire, but by words, as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda would show. (more…)

                         By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            I surely would have loved to have had this piece published in the Ghanaian Times, at least the online version of the government-owned daily that bills itself, arguably, as “Ghana’s Most Authoritative Newspaper.” But I know fully well that this “horse wish,” so to say, is unlikely to happen in the offing. It is unlikely to happen because nearly three, or so, years ago, the Times’ online editor, Mr. Douglas Akwasi Owusu, after having published several of my articles (a few of them even accompanied by my portrait, at the urging of the Times’ online editor himself), made a request that I personally found to be rather profoundly unprofessional and a bit repugnant. (more…)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            In a recent interview on Adom-Fm’s “Dwaso Nsem” (or “Conversations in the Marketplace”), former Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) cum National Democratic Congress (NDC) stalwart Dr. Yao Obed Asamoah, registered his signal approval of the illegal Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) recently established by President John Evans Atta-Mills. Intriguingly, however, the longtime Justice and Foreign minister of Ghana vehemently decried attempts by ardent lovers of democratic justice to seek the salutary expurgation of the so-called Indemnity Clause from the Fourth-Republican Ghanaian Constitution. (more…)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

            At the Resurrection Methodist Church in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, some of the elders and many congregants are reported to be incensed over the alleged rape of a young woman by a prominent priest. The young woman had, reportedly, been sent to deliver a package to the accused, only to be luridly and unexpectedly fondled and brutally raped. The cleric, whose name has been given as Rt.-Rev. Quao Agyiri, has yet to clarify the allegation, let alone assist the Accra police with possible investigation of the alleged incident (See “Sex Scandal Hits Methodist Church; Bishop Fingered” MyJoyOnline.com 1/20/10). (more…)

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Following the presidential edict establishing a 9-member Constitutional Review Commission (CRC), the traditional overlord of Agogo, Asante-Akyem, Nana Kwame Akuoko-Sarpong, was reported to have thrown his full-weight behind the controversial $ 3 million exercise whose entire membership is both extra-parliamentary and extra-judicial. We highlight the latter facts because the Omanhene of Agogo also served in the short-lived Third-Republican Ghanaian parliament. We must further add, also, the fact that Nana Akuoko-Sarpong is a notable lawyer by profession.

What makes his exuberant support for the Constitutional Review Commission verge on the outright suspicious is the fact that, as a former parliamentarian and a publicly professed advocate of democratic governance, Nana Akuoko-Sarpong must be fully in the know about both constitutional and parliamentary protocol, particularly with regard to the fact of the Legislative Branch of any respectably functional democracy being charged with the critical responsibility of safeguarding the drafting, revision and implementation of the rules of good governance. (more…)