He is not the first Ghanaian medical doctor or professional practitioner to inform us, ad-nauseam, that virtually every human ailment or major medical condition in the country has a medically trained bona fide Ghanaian citizen who is perfectly capable of successfully treating the same (See “Ofori-Atta’s Prostate Cancer Can Be Treated in Ghana; He’s Just Making Excuses – Dr. Anaba” Modernghana.com 6/17/25). As I vividly recall, the very first medical practitioner that this writer personally saw and heard via the media make the selfsame comment or such “professionally knowing” remark, recently, was Prof. Agyeman-Badu Akosa, the renowned former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Director-General of the Ghana Medical Services.
The Asante-Mampong-born and heir and claimant to the Okwawuman Royal Stool at Abene is a pathologist or a coroner, in Anglo-British parlance, by training. Here in the United States of America, though, Prof. Akosa would also be officially known and called a “Medical Examiner.” Incidentally, Prof. Agyeman-Badu Akosa’s late father, Mr. J C Akosa, a District Commissioner of Ghana’s First Republic, was also an elementary school pupil of this author’s immortalized maternal grandfather and the virtual “Founding-Architect” of the Asante-Mampong Presbyterian Primary and Middle Schools, namely, The Reverend Theodore Henry (T H) Yawbe Sintim(-Aboagye) of Akyem-Asiakwa and Akyem-Begoro and, as he most expressly preferred to be known and called, “Rev. Sintim of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana.”
My maternal grandfather literally lived and “ate” Presbyterian Culture and Theology as his existential and ontological diet. But, of course, this most resplendent and very interesting aspect and narrative of his life is prime grist for a wholly different story and subject for another column in the near future. For now, however, we have decided to focus our attention and interest on the details of the contents of the afore-referenced news story that appears at the very beginning of this column, in which the former Medical Director of the Ridge Hospital, in the Greater-Accra Region, haughtily and presumptuously calls the decision of an officially indicted Mr. Kenneth (Nana Yaw) Ofori-Atta, cousin of former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the latter’s appointed former Finance Minister, to seek medical treatment overseas for what has officially been described as prostate cancer as a “bogus pretext” for the evasion of judicial accountability of his widely maligned stewardship.
Well, as the caption of the afore-referenced news story carrying the statement by Dr. Thomas Anaba, the former Medical Director of the Ridge Hospital, disparaging the decision by both Mr. Ofori-Atta and his family to seek medical treatment abroad for the former Finance and Economic Planning Minister clearly indicates, Dr. Anaba, who presently serves as the National Democratic Congress (NDC)-sponsored Member of Parliament for the Garu-Timpane Constituency, in the Upper-East Region, has an inescapable politically motivated axe to grind with the Ofori-Atta Family and the entire Asona Clan of Akyem-Abuakwa, which clearly has to do with the widely publicized dismissal of the Cuban-trained Dr. Anaba’s removal as Medical Director of the Ridge Hospital, largely predicated on the National Democratic Congress’ own long-established precedent for the removal of political appointees, with the dawn of every proverbial “Changing of the Guards,” that is, in procedural consonance with every change of government. At least the latter protocol has become the norm since the very inception of Ghana’s Fourth Republic, on January 7, 1992 or 1993.
So, it is quite unarguably clear that Dr. Anaba has never forgiven the political operatives of the Ofori-Panyin Clan for merely and simply charting a course and a cause pre-established by the key operatives of the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-founded institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress. Truth be told: Dr. Thomas Anaba has never forgiven Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Cousin Kenneth (Nana Yaw) Ofori-Atta for rigorously following through with an executive precedent pre-established by the leadership of the National Democratic Congress, of which the Garu-Timpane Parliamentary Representative is presently an integral part and parcel.
Which immediately and logically brings us to the critical question of why fully being in the know about the fact that virtually every disease or ailment known to humankind has a professionally trained Ghanaian physician or medical specialist who is fully equipped and resourced to successfully treat the same and yet, Dr. Anaba had apparently and deliberately not promptly come public to inform the general Ghanaian public and the citizenry that it was downright and absolutely unnecessary and damn superfluous and criminally profligate, to be certain, for the Vice-President, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, to have been recently flown out of the country for medical treatment on a specially chartered Jetliner, at the expense of the heavily burdened Ghanaian taxpayer?
Is this just because, somehow, in the politically motivated and propelled imagination of the graduate of the University of Havana, Cuba, and the University of Rome, Italy, unlike Vice-President Opoku-Agyemang, Mr. Ofori-Atta is a second-class citizen whose life and existence are of far less value and significance than that of the Elmina, Central Region, native and the First Female Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana’s foremost tertiary academy for the training of the very teachers and education administrators, whose academic and professional preparation the former Minister of Education callously informed the nation was not worth a cedi, much less a pesewa of the age-old professional trainee allowances of which 74-year-old Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang had been a prime beneficiary herself, as a student of the University of Cape Coast?
And by the way, is Mr. Ofori-Atta the very first or the only Ghanaian former Minister-of-State or Key Cabinet Appointee who has ever been flown out of the country for medical treatment, who had at the time of his travel abroad had been slapped with largely forensically unproven allegations and charges of the criminal misappropriation of public funds? Come on, Dr. Anaba “The Doubting” Thomas, Give Us a Break!
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
