Contrary to what the Deputy Director of Elections and Information Technology (EIT) for Ghana’s presently ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Rashid Tanko Computer – not sure “Computer” is really his last name – would have the rest of his country believe, the August 6, 2026 strategically orchestrated Faux-Commemoration of the “Mysterious” Helicopter Conflagration of and the Bonfire Barbecuing of the Two Senior Cabinet Members of the Mahama Government and several members of the National Democratic Congress, as well as several party higherups, including the former substantive Director of Elections and IT for the latter party or political establishment, Dr. Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah, at the time of his death, Ghana’s Minister of Defense, was absolutely no happenstance.

Rather, the objective truth be told, it was part of a long concatenation of premeditated accidents waiting to happen, of which a remarkable portion of critically thinking Ghanaian citizens and residents have been fully in the know going as far back as the Atta-Mills Tragedy in July 2012 (See “ ‘NPP Killed Ghana’s Democracy’ – NDC’s Rashid Tanko Claps Back at ‘Democracy Under Attack’ Demo” Modernghana.com 8/6/26).

In the August 6, 2025, instance of the premeditated string of accidents waiting to happen, there were way too many coincidences regarding precisely just who got into the veritable hangman’s noose and the inescapable death trap that was allegedly poorly maintained and serviced Chinese-made Military Helicopter for any pensive or critically thinking, reasonably well-educated adult-Ghanaian citizen to have been completely caught off-guard or flatfooted. Only mildly retarded Ghanaian citizens would be apt to lap up this poppycock that, somehow, it was an absolute coincidence that none of the four originally scheduled party Big Cheeses or Bigwigs, who were supposed to have been aboard the flight, from our nation’s capital of Accra to the gold-mining township of Obuasi, including President John Dramani Mahama, would all serendipitously miss their flight just in the nick of time, for reasons that clearly seemed contrived and strikingly similar, although for completely different official engagements, all having to do with impromptu meetings and each and every one of them having ready-primed replacements. You see, one would have thought that with so many of the key travelers suddenly unavailable, that the ultimately ill-fated Galamsey-inspired flight would have been promptly aborted and rescheduled for another more convenient time in the offing.

Moreso, when it had also been widely reported by both the media and the relevant meteorological stations and establishments that the weather that morning was inclement or not conducive for aerial smooth sailing, as it were. For instance, in an apparent gut reaction from a visibly shocked and confused, or even horrified, Alhaji Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, the Minister for the Interior at the time, and one supposes presently as well, we had the vociferous representation of the vehement protestation of a premonitive Dr. Omane-Boamah, who clearly appears to have sensed the sinister gloom and doom that immediately lay ahead the, in retrospect, ill-fated Z-9 Helicopter Flight.

At any rate, what we all need to be studiously focused on, presently, is not the usual pedestrian and predictable “What Went Wrong” with the proverbial Flying Machine itself, but why all the most important originally scheduled party officials and the key operatives of the Mahama regime, including the ruling party’s National Chairman, Mr. Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia, had not evidently been possessed of/or with the requisite presence of mind to as promptly the three or four of these seniormost party stalwarts had each and every one of them, individually, called off their own participation – for want of the most appropriate terminology – in the, in retrospect, the ill-fated Anti-Galamsey Batting flight if, indeed, the latter event or confabulation was truly relevant, to speak less about signal significance, on the National Development Agenda of the National Democratic Congress.

We hereby make the foregoing critical observation because since the occurrence of the accidental-and-the-deliberate orchestration of the downright barbaric massacre of the August 6, 2025 “China-Made” Z-9 Helicopter Tragedy – we prefer the more appropriate terminology of “Disaster” – there has not been any dead-serious attempt by the Mahama Government to staunch the perennially deadly and the environmentally destructive activities of Galamsey, or the purportedly officially proscribed Small-Scale Artisanal Mining Activities. If anything at all, the environmentally predatory and unspeakably suicidal and downright genocidal Galamsey-related activities have been on an exponential rise of a magnitude far in excess of what prevailed under the 8 years or the two consecutive terms of the New Patriotic Party-sponsored Akufo-Addo Government.

So, it really cannot be that the ill-fated Omane-Boamah Z-9 Chinese Helicopter Flight was politically even half as significant as the Ballot-Snatching Mahama Robber-Baron Regime would have the rest of us, bona fide Ghanaian citizens, believe. As of this writing, though, it clearly and perfectly looks as if the hitherto purportedly epic battle against the malicious and cancerous tumor of Galamsey has almost exclusively devolved into what may be aptly deemed or termed as “Partisan Retributive Justice,” with the brunt of the targets of prosecutorial justice jihadically focused on such ardent and inveterate opponents of the ideological and the institutional establishment of the ruling National Democratic Congress, such as the present or former, I forget which, Asante Regional Chairman of the country’s main opposition political establishment, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), to wit, Mr. Bernard Antwi-Boasiako – aka Chairman Wontumi – and the Akufo-Addo relative and the former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr. Kenneth (Nana Yaw) Ofori-Atta, for only two of the most strikingly and conspicuously obvious examples.

Now, he may be darn too young and epistemically and scholastically ill-equipped to remember the fact that the first blow that was irreparably unleashed against Ghana’s democratic culture in the postcolonial era was the cold-calculated Midnight Abduction and the Mafia-Style Execution of the Three Akan-Descended Accra High Court Judges, namely, Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow; Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong; and Frederick Poku-Sarkodie, on June 30, 1982. And from then on, it was an apocalyptic freefall and downward spiral for the next two decades of the Rawlings-Tsikata Reign-of-Terror. And guess what? Isn’t the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings the universally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress?

Indeed, if I were Mr. Rashid Tanko Computer – God Forbid! But I don’t mean this as a statement of malice or hostility – I would start worrying about my next trip on an NDC-commandeered or chartered Military Helicopter Flight, irrespective of the concerned Flying Machine’s country of origin or manufacture. Remember, Omane-Boamah was right where you presently are, or perhaps just a little higher up the ladder, when you were still in diapers.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]