It is rather comically oxymoronic for the pathologically bigoted man who codified and institutionalize corruption and vigilantism in the country, as we presently know it, to be accusing President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of having “re-institutionalized” corruption and graft under the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) government. Remember: Mr. Rawlings also accused former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, his onetime minion and Secretary for Local Government, of being thoroughgoing and incurably corrupt.
But I was also exceedingly glad that Chairman Jerry John Rawlings chose to commemorate the 36th anniversary of the most primitive, morally regressive and ethnocentric putsch in Ho, the capital of the Trokosi Nationalists; for the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) had absolutely nothing to do with Ghana’s general uplift and development, but rather everything to do with Ewe-ethnic supremacy and the wanton plunder of our national resources (See “Corruption Re-Institutionalized Under NPP – Rawlings” MyNewsGh.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/1/18).
Our readers may also do themselves great epistemic or scholastic good by reading Mr. Zaya Yeebo’s highly informative article titled “December 31, 1981: How the ‘IMF Baby’ Betrayed Its Parents” (Modernghana.com 12/24/17). Essentially, Mr. Yeebo, who was one of the original members of the Rawlings and Kojo Tsikata-led Provisional National Defense Council, observes some of the same things that I have observed, and well before me Prof. Albert Adu-Boahen, of blessed memory, in the recent past about the fact that the so-called values of the PNDC, and before the latter the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), had absolutely nothing to do with “revolutionary culture,” the way the latter may be routinely spoken of vis-à-vis Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Muammar Gaddhafy’s Libya, at the respective heights of these disparate revolutionary movements.
I suppose that what Chairman Rawlings means when he talks about the “revolutionary principles of accountability, probity, transparency and justice” is picking up an AK-47 assault rifle and flying one of the country’s couple of World War II-era military jets and seizing state-owned bungalows. Then also, what do you call Mr. Rawlings’ use of Ghana Airforce jets to privately tutor his daughters and son how to fly without paying for such illegal use of state-owned property? Probity and accountability? Indeed, if the man were as politically and/or officially accountable and transparent as he claims to be, why did Chairman Rawlings have to conceal the fact that he had criminally extorted some $ 5 million (USD) from Nigeria’s Gen. Sani Abacha for nearly twenty years?
For nearly as long as the foregoing number of years, Mr. Rawlings vehemently and publicly denied that he had taken any such sum of fresh hard currency belonging to the Nigerian taxpayer, until he was deftly finessed by a much smarter Nigerian journalist to shamefacedly confess. You see, dear reader, I long lost my appetite for wanting to return to live and work in Ghana, after it became painfully clear to me that the country had literally been cannibalized by the desperate and depraved reprobates of the Rawlings-Tsikata-Trokosi Nationalist Cabal. Indeed, a rollcall of Who’s Who in the National Democratic Congress would clearly indicate that the P/NDC has absolutely no credible progressive nationalist edge to it.
Anyway, in Mr. Yeebo’s article, the Editor of the journal called Public Agenda pointedly observes that within two years of ousting the Limann-led, democratically elected People’s National Party (PNP), Chairman Rawlings would even more doggedly and tenaciously pursue fundamentally the same capitalist ideological and fiscal principles (the so-called Structural Adjustment Program) that he had virulently and self-righteously accused President Hilla “Babinin” Limann of “shamefully and unwisely” pursuing.
You see, truth be told, the half-Scottish and half-Ewe Chairman Rawlings has absolutely no respect for Ghanaians of northern ethnicity and/or descent. But, of course, with such stereotypical northern-descended robber-baron buffoons like Mr. John Dramani Mahama servilely following the Trokosi Nationalist Godfather to Ho, to celebrate the 36th anniversary of the wanton plunder and blistering desecration of Ghanaian leadership and the presidency, who can blame Sogakope Jato for feeling and waxing so self-righteously about himself?
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