Opinion: What Lesson, Mr. Fuseini? Mr. Quaitoo Spoke from Experience! – By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Mr William Agyapong Quaitoo

Mr. William Agyapong Quaitoo, who was recently forced to resign his cabinet post as Deputy Food and Agriculture Minister, by a group of self-righteous and thuggish and cynical Northern-descended politicians and civil society leaders, may have touched on raw nerves when he observed that many of those claiming to be farmers in the so-called Three Northern Regions whose farms were destroyed by armyworms, may well have been lying through their teeth. But the fact of the matter is that nobody can seriously impeach the credibility of the former Deputy Food and Agriculture Minister who incontrovertibly spoke from first-hand experience (See “Politicians Should Take a Cue from Deputy Agric Minister’s Resignation – NDC-MP” Citifmonline.com / Modernghana.com 8/30/17).

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According to Mr. Quaitoo, he spent 27 years of his life in the Northern Region and speaks Dagbani and Dagomba like a native. As far as any critical thinker can tell, about the only blunder committed by the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Oda was the ostensibly cynical undertone of his words. In other words, Mr. Quaitoo could still have made his point by wording his concerns differently. I mean, in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, for example, we all heard Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei attempt to make a special pleading for northern-descended Ghanaian citizens who lacked the requisite IDs and other valid documents authorized by the Wood Supreme Court to qualify them to vote. But, of course, it was quite obvious that the Chairwoman of the Electoral Commission (EC) was deviously and mischievously attempting to finesse the Court so as to enable her to illegally pack the Voters’ Roll with Mahama partisans.

It is quite certain that National Democratic Congress’ stalwarts like Mr. A.B.A. Fuseini are fully cognizant of the fraudulent culture of deceit that Mr. Quaitoo was talking about which, by the way, is not peculiar to only the North. This is also where the former Deputy Ministry went astray. Indeed, it may not have sounded pleasant, but it was, nevertheless, the unalloyed truth. Where I beg to differ with Mr. Quaitoo is the weird notion that, somehow, if the government wanted to ascertain the fact of which claimants for compensation actually owned and had cultivated a farmland destroyed by armyworms, the government would not be able to successfully do so. Of course, the government could do so if it was dead-serious about not doling out money to fraudsters or fraudulent applicants for compensation. It would be just a matter of meticulous sleuthing.

I am, however, a bit settled or at peace to learn that Mr. Quaitoo resigned of his own volition, rather than having been pushed to do so by any of the movers-and-shakers at the Presidency. Still, my better judgment would have loved to see the Akyem-’Daa MP duke it out with his northern-descended NDC political detractors who saw absolutely nothing wrong with former President John Dramani Mahama, unarguably the most guilty Ghanaian politician vis-à-vis the cold and calculated rhetorical deployment of tribal abuse and disdain. Wasn’t it the infamous Gonja native who had the temerity to call Akyemfo “morons” with no civilized sense of environmental preservation, and characterized Asantefo as “pathological ingrates” who saw absolutely no good in the progressive policies and marvelous performance of his government?

I mean, I simply don’t see how Mr. Fuseini, the Parliamentary Spokesman for the NDC in the Media, could muster the chutzpah to feel so morally superior to Mr. Quaitoo. Someone, help me on this one.

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