I was not only paralyzed with bewilderment but stupefied with astonishment when I read a piece penned by Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Haruna Attah with the heading; Kume Preko, Setting the Record Straight, published on Starrfm.com.gh, in which he sets out to create his own illusions, makes Akufo-Addo look like a monster in his surrealistic world and lambasts him for same.
In his write-up, Haruna Atta, for reasons I am still struggling to come to terms with, creates the impression that Akufo-Addo has claimed credit for himself apropos the role he played in the famous Kume Preko demonstration. Haruna Atta finds it unfathomable why Akufo-Addo wants to create the impression that he architected the entire Kume Preko uprising when it was indeed, Charles Wereko-Brobbey who promulgated the idea.
Haruna Atta makes the point that Akufo-Addo cannot be anything more than the spokesperson for the group as that was the consensus reached at the meeting, and not the leader of the group.
I have painstakingly roamed the internet with the view of landing on a statement or comment directly or indirectly made by Nana Akufo-Addo which seemed or seems to portray him as the architect of Kume Preko.
In fact, President Akufo-Addo has never claimed anywhere that he originated Kume Preko. For the avoidance of doubt, NDC apparatchiks, over the years, in their attempts to tag Akufo-Addo as a violent person, said he led the Kume Preko demonstrations. If such an impression has been created, Haruna Atta should blame his own party people, not Akufo-Addo.
For someone Haruna Atta would want to dwarf to the backstage with this piece of his, since, in his warped opinion, he did not stack up to expectations as a leader, is it not strange he was made the spokesperson for the group? It simply stands to reason that he was a great force to reckon with, hence that overwhelming belief in him at the time.
Is it also not strange that for someone we are being forced to swallow the opinion that Akufo-Addo played a role unworthy of mentioning is the only one amongst the organizers of Kume Preko who has risen to the topmost position of the land as President? Wereko-Brobbey who seems to have captivated the mind and heart of Haruna Atta formed UGM in 2000 and his performance at the polls was nothing to write home about. In fact, he came last in the elections. UGM, as I write, is an extinct entity.
It is important to stress on the point that President Akufo-Addo has never hidden the fact that Kume Preko, how the team was formed and how the demonstrations were organized were a collective enterprise and that no single person can take credit for that important event and milestone that heralded a new breath of democracy that brought real freedom to the Ghanaian people.
Haruna Atta is a tribal bigot. His intense hatred for Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party is the enzyme driving him to invent such palpable falsehoods against the number one gentleman of the land.
Coming events, it is often said, cast their own shadows. Haruna Atta is unappreciative of what President Akufo-Addo did for him when he was struggling to make ends meet in those days. It is only an ungrateful person who would set out to malign someone who was once his benefactor. Haruna Atta was employed by Nana Akufo-Addo in the 90s as the editor of the Statesman. He subsequently left the Statesman to establish his defunct Accra Mail with the sole objective of competing with the Statesman.
Significantly, Accra Mail, Haruna Atta’s newspaper, turned out to be a stupendous failure and has since folded up while the Statesman remains a major force in the Ghanaian media landscape.
He is disgruntled and has developed a jaundiced and venomous bitterness towards President Akufo-Addo. It was out of this same ethnocentrism that he pitched camps with Mahama who, in turn, elevated him to be an ambassador.
Alhaji Haruna Atta hopes against improbable hope that Mahama would become President again so that the largesse he used to enjoy for no particular suffering for the NDC would return to him in droves.
Haruna Atta’s unusual media gymnastic with respect to this write-up and others before it are geared towards making Akufo-Addo look bad in the eyes of his peers and Ghanaians in general. Today, Haruna Atta is a desperate, miserable and bitter man due to his folly in supporting Mahama and his senseless tribal agenda.
This dream of Haruna Atta will turn into a mere wishful thinking.
P.K.Sarpong, Whispers from the Corridors of the Thinking Place.
