Society is an extension of the individual. The most we can hope to do with a problematic psyche is to re-form it. No responsible psychoanalyst would aim to do more, for to do more, to overthrow the psyche itself, would be to unleash insanity. No. We can only hope to rearrange some details in the periphery of the human personality. Any disturbance of its core is an invitation to disaster, (Chinua Achebe, ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH).
I read this book titled ‘THE STRANGE MAN, by Amu Djoleto in my secondary school days. I have yearned to get a copy for myself all these years but to no avail. In the story, I remember this man who had been summoned before the elders of his community for having done something untoward. Among the elders sitting in judgement was another man who had coveted another man’s wife, a matter which had been kept under cover by those who needed to deal with it publicly. Sadly for this covetous man, he first questioned the man before the elders. Little did he know that the man before them had knowledge of his sexual escapades with a married woman. So the man before them looked straight in the eyes of his accuser and asked him whether he had finished addressing his covetous issue as regards the angry man whose wife he slept with. There was silence.
Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART could not tolerate a man among his kindred who opened his mouth wide in a meeting when the man has no record of achievement in the community or in the family. Osugo had no titles, not even a barnyard to show for his industry. Okonkwo had told him the meeting was for men and not women, brusque way of dismissing him for his failures.
I have had the opportunity to listen to Kwadwo Adu Asare a member of the NDC propaganda team and now a Presidential Staffer at the seat of government. His favourite phrases against some NPP personalities are ‘they don’t have credibility and they lack integrity’. His biggest target within the NPP is Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the running mate of Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo. No opportunity to discuss whatever Dr. Bawumia had said publicly that Kwadwo Adu Asare will not jump on this internationally respected son of this country and attempt to destroy his credibility.
Well, one cannot attempt to destroy something a person does not have, Dr. Bawumia has credibility and Adu Asare believes that the only way for the NDC to win power in 2016 is not to fulfill its promises to the electorate, but to engage in personality attacks on an individual who punches holes in the economic policies of the Mahama administration and the immense hardships the government has imposed on the people of this country. Certainly if those exposures by Dr. Bawumia had been done even by my humble self, I am not sure it would have attracted so much attention and discussions nationally and internationally.
The world discusses issues for good or ill when the source of the issue is a credible one. So even if Dr. Bawumia had been wrong in his analysis of the Ghanaian economy, the interest in the issues he raises attract comments because he is credible in the field of economics and finance.
Now who is Adu Asare? Kwadwo Adu Asare was one time the Member of Parliament for Adentan on the ticket of the NDC from 2009-2013. While as a sitting MP, he contested for a position on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and lost miserably. He wept and went into tantrums. So angry and frustrated was he that he decided not to contest in the 2012 Parliamentary elections publicly. When his senses later on took over his vituperations, he presented himself for re-election and predictably lost.
When the NDC came into office again in 2013, he was pushed to take over one of the tentacles of ‘Create, Loot and Share’ companies of the Mahama administration. He did not last for even a month, he was removed. To wipe away his tears once again, he was pushed to the seat of the Presidency as a Presidential Staffer with no clearly defined role. Then came the World Cup tournament, the Black Stars qualified. And instead of the Ministry for Sports and the Ghana Football Association (GFA) handling the processes, the idle hands at the Presidency found their way onto the myriad of Committees put in place to organize the process.
Adu Asare found himself on one or more of the Committees set up to prepare the players and other officials to Brazil. The 2014 World Cup tournament was the most disgraceful out of the three we, as a nation, had the opportunity to participate in. What were the outcomes? Players threatening to boycott matches, a fight between officials and players leading to a slap by a player on an official, criminal flight of millions of dollars in fiscal cash to Brazil to be shared among players and officials and so many bad things including criminal dissipation of public funds. Adu Asare was part of this criminality. Ghana became a laughing stock in the comity of nations.
President Mahama, embarrassed by this international disgrace under his reign, (remember Kufuor and Atta Mills had supervised the two previous participations) set up the Dzamesi Committee to investigate what went on. We watched the proceedings live on GTV, and one of the people who looked very miserable and was bereft of credibility and integrity was Kwadwo Adu Asare. Unable to answer simple questions, he wept uncontrollably like a hungry child who had just lost his only cedi.
All of a sudden, his shoes (probably purchased in Brazil with our taxes) could not fit him and instead of concentrating on the questions and answering them, he was fidgeting with his shoes and weeping at the same time. This is the man who talks about credibility of Dr. Bawumia. For Adu Asare’s information, Dr. Bawumia has never appeared before any Commission of enquiry nor appeared before any court as a suspect. Adu Asare has appeared before a Commission of Enquiry, the report of that enquiry is still resting in the bosom of the President. Nobody knows what the Commission’s recommendation on Adu Asare and the others are.
Is that a man to question the credibility of Dr. Bawumia? In any civilized and serious nation, Adu Asare will not be anywhere close to the lawns of the Presidency let alone being a staffer. My advice to Adu Asare is that if I were in his pinching shoe, I would not touch my political opponents since they have the power to revisit the Commission’s report which I am sure found him culpable but only being protected by Mahama who cares not about Ghana. Adu Asare is like any of the characters in Amu Djoleto and Chinua Achebe’s books. If he has any sense of shame, his voice would not be heard publicly.
It is only in the NDC under Mahama that such potential criminals like Adu Asare, will be parading in the corridors of the Presidency and have the effrontery to cast aspersions on the integrity and credibility of noble persons with visible achievements and internationally impeccable image. Just watch Adu Asare speaking on any T. V channel and you see nobody but an asthmatic or hypertensive individual, emotionally unbalanced, illogical in his thoughts, irrational in reasoning and exquisite in the perpetration of unadulterated lies with the zeal to impress his pay master.
If Adu Asare wants to identify a man without integrity and credibility, he should not go far, the man who is giving him protection by keeping the Commission’s report to his chest has no credibility among the generality of decent thinking Ghanaians because of his string of failed promises and open thievery of national resources as the nation bleeds. That is where Adu Asare should direct his effusions. Three tots of mahogany bitters, daavi.