Opinion: Such Frivolities and Inanities Do an NDC-MP Make – By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Dr. Clement Apaak

To fully appreciate the great success being currently chalked by the Akufo-Addo Administration, one only needs to these days pay studious attention to the riotously rampant resort to flippant and frivolous and inane criticism of Nana  Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and some of his cabinet appointees by some of the key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), so-called. For instance, following the transfer of Alhaji Boniface Abubakar Saddique, the ruling New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Madina, in the Greater-Accra Region, to the Office of Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, Dr. Clement Apaak, the NDC’s MP for Builsa-South, in the Upper-East Region, came out swinging and plaintively claiming that it was unconstitutional for President Akufo-Addo’s Communications Director, Mr. Eugene Arhin, to have made such an announcement because the Office of the Vice-President is not a unique (he meant “discrete”) administrative entity, since the latter position falls directly under the Office of the Presidency.

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In the opinion of the former nondescript John Dramani Mahama Presidential Staffer, Mr. Arhin ought to rather have announced the transfer of the former Inner-City and Zongo Development Minister to the Office of the President as a Minister of State in the Office of Vice-President Bawumia. Maybe somebody ought to remind Dr. Apaak that right from the beginning, that is 2007, or thereabouts, when he selected the then-Deputy Governor, or former Deputy Governor, of the nation’s central treasury, the Bank of Ghana, as his running-mate, then-Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made it emphatically clear that his Vice-President-in-waiting was going to be recognized and treated as a full-partner of the President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana. He would not be treated in the short-shrift way the late Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur was widely alleged to have been treated by former President Mahama and some of his aides. It is also quite clear that the apparently addle-brained Dr. Apaak has yet to fully recover from the acute trauma that he and his former boss and erstwhile NDC-MP for Gonja-West, in the Northern Region, suffered at the hands of Nana Akufo-Addo, the sometime NPP-MP for Akyem-Abuakwa-South.

Else, Dr. Apaak would have long realized that the Office of the Vice-President was constitutionally established with its own clearly defined set of rules, regulations and functions. You see, the NDC operatives are used to envisaging the Vice-Presidency as a doormat to be ridden roughshod over by the substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana and the aides and assigns of the latter. For instance, the first Vice-President of the Jerry John Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress, the late Mr. Ekwow Nkensen Arkaah, was widely known to have been routinely disrespected and slapped around by the former Chairman of the erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and his aides and assigns. Of Fante descent or ethnicity, Mr. Arkaah would be followed by the literally handpicked Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, late, the former University of Ghana’s Faculty of Law professor, who was equally well known to have been treated like Mr. Rawlings’ butler.

In the camp of the ruling New Patriotic Party, however, Nana Akufo-Addo is morally refreshingly the exception. Rather than waste his time shadow-boxing over the patently inane question of whether the recent transfer/shuffling of Mr. Saddique from the Inner-City and Zongo Development Ministry to the Office of Vice-President Bawumia is constitutional or unconstitutional, Dr. Appak would do himself and his associates greater good by learning something meaningful from the respectful and dignified manner in which President Akufo-Addo is widely known to treat his Vice-President and has always treated Alhaji Bawumia over the past 11 years that these two leaders have been working hand-in-glove and counting.

It was also quite amusing to hear Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority Leader, sheepishly attempt to impeach the Finance Minister, Mr. Kenneth Ofori-Atta, because the latter had aptly and commandingly read his mid-year budgetary statement a week, or so, before the statutorily stipulated deadline was due. It was not that Mr. Ofori-Atta had flagrantly flouted statutory protocol or command; rather, it was just that the Yale- and Columbia-educated Finance Minister had presented his near picture-perfect mid-year’s budgetary statement smartly ahead of the official schedule. Now, I don’t know that the Tamale-South’s NDC-MP is aware of the fact that it takes much shorter time and distance driving from Kyebi to Accra, than from Tamale to our nation’s capital.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com  Ghanaffairs

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