As I vividly recall, there was a time, not very long ago, when a Mahama Deputy Minister by the name of Nii Lante Vanderpuye stood high on an electioneering campaign platform and sneered that then-Candidate Akufo-Addo was too short and unprepossessing (or unattractive) to be elected President of Ghana. We did not hear any vehement calls from the National Democratic Congress’ parliamentary representatives or the Presidency for Mr. Vanderpuye’s resignation.
And then, a party General-Secretary second-bananas by the name of Koku Anyidoho, then Director of Communications for the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills, was widely reported to have described the visage or face of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor as “damn too ugly for me to behold.” Once again, nobody among the top-ranking membership of the National Democratic Congress demanded Mr. Anyidoho’s immediate resignation. An officially extorted public apology was all it took for Mr. Anyidoho to keep his fat-salaried job. And, well , even if they did, there is absolutely no evidence that the Mills Presidency paid any heed. This is just a simple matter of setting the records straight and letting the chips fall where they may.
And so, just what Code of Ethics would our young handsome broadcast journalist have the Akufo-Addo Administration, or Presidency, in common Ghanaian parlance, fashion and activate here? The only trouble-shooting mechanism that I would demand is one that enables the operatives of our state-security apparatus spot the hatching of a $ 72 million mega-scam before the Ghanaian taxpayer is taken to the cleaners.
Anyway, the geo-tribal war-lady is described in the rather unnecessarily sensational news article produced about her as “an ace journalist,” and so it is quite safe to assume that Ms. Shamima Muslim was old enough to have been plying her trade when Mr. John Dramani Mahama was President of Ghana. But, of course, what we find to be even more significant, for polemical reasons, is the knowledge that Ms. Muslim also claims to have been born in Accra and schooled in Cape Coast. As well, equally significant is our protagonist’s claim that she a bona fide Ghanaian citizen of northern descent, which logically leads us to the following question:
Where was Ms. Muslim, when then-President John Dramani Mahama, her fellow northern-descended Ghanaian citizen, virulently cursed out the people of Kyebi, the Okyeman capital, their Paramount King and Okyeman, in general, as a traditional state that was thoroughly composed of congenital morons who had absolutely no remarkable sense of environmental health and decency? As well, where was this “Muslim” woman when Mr. Mahama called Kyebi the Galamsey Capital of Ghana, with the full and incontrovertible knowledge that his own brother, Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, was the foremost Galamsey predator on Okyeman lands? (See “Shamima Muslim Demands Answers from Nana Addo Following Quaitoo’s Resignation” Yen.Com.Gh / Ghanaweb.com 8/31/17).
There is, of course, quite a slew of northern-descended Ghanaian politicians who have viciously maligned Ghanaian citizens of southern descent, largely of Akan ethnicity, including one “ace journalist” who is presently the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Tamale-North called Mr. Alhassan Suhuyini. Ms. Muslim would do her credibility great good and the rest of us scandalized Ghanaians, both at home and abroad, great favor by referring to one instance in her “ace” journalistic career when she demanded of then-President John Dramani Mahama, some of the same answers that she presently presumes President Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party government to owe her and her northern-descended kinswomen and kinsmen, such as precisely how Nana Akufo-Addo feels about the negative remarks allegedly made by Mr. William Agyapong Quaitoo about Ghanaian farmers of northern descent.
Did Ms. Muslim back then, for example, demand of the self-proclaimed “Northern Messiah” the imperative need for the establishment of a Code-of-Ethics to strictly police the conduct of all Mahama cabinet appointees, as well as party stalwarts and even ordinary members of the National Democratic Congress? And has Ms. Muslim ever heard the name of a deputy NDC cabinet appointee by the name of Mr. Kobby Acheampong, who called Mr. Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie (aka Sir John), the present head of the National Forestry Commission and former NPP General-Secretary, a rustic Asante Cocoa Farm bumpkin? Was Mr. Achempong asked to resign his job by either President Atta-Mills or then-Vice-President John Mahama?
Or are we here being made to understand that Ghanaians of northern descent, especially supporters and sympathizers of the main opposition National Democratic Congress are, somehow, above the 1992 Constitution and the laws of the land? And if so, precisely why so? But even more significantly, can Ms. Muslim refer the rest of us to any letter of protest that she had composed in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, demanding the immediate resignation of President Mahama?
We must also underscore the fact that, by his own public testimony, Mr. Quaitoo lived in the Northern Region for some 27 years and speaks Dagomba and Dagbani with the fluency of a native-speaker and, very likely, with much more fluency and eloquence than the Cape Coast-educated Ms. Muslim. But even more significantly, Mr. Quaitoo well appears to be more conversant with the language and culture of the people he rather unfortunately spoke so scandalously about. Even so, what makes the public apology rendered by Mr. Quaitoo worth any less morally than the poorly rehearsed apology rendered by then-President Mahama who, by the way, was never pressured to resign, to the Okyeman Council?
Tell us, Ms. Muslim, if yours is not a viciously calculated act of unconscionable hypocrisy and a cheap publicity stunt, what is it? A Code-of-Ethics for who? Dear reader, you be the judge.