Kojo Oppong Nkrumah
Yesterday the Ministry of Information and the country’s top doctors involved in the COVID-19 duel hosted one of the many media encounters to update Ghanaians on the progress so far.
One of the segments of the discourse had to do with diluting the toxic project of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), as the party’s propaganda machinery is already on overdrive, with the COVID-19 management in the country as the fodder.
The project is intended to reduce to the barest minimum the positive impact government has made in the area of containing, isolating and even treating cases of the pestilence.
It does not matter the quality of those at the frontline, the NDC’s objective is to question the integrity of the figures being churned out alongside the inroads being chalked up, thereby reducing the positive impact being registered in the minds of Ghanaians.
The results have so far been unproductive, as more and more Ghanaians understand the cantankerous ways of the NDC. Ghanaians have over the years been healed of the amnesia which former President John Mahama said they were afflicted with. Today, therefore, when the former President is busy distributing food during the lockdown as Dr. Ezenator Rawlings spews mendacious stuff about government doing same on party lines, Ghanaians understand that it is part of a grand scheme.
The COVID-19 propaganda, being unfolded now and busily so by the NDC, is the outcome of a carefully crafted strategy and guarded, of course. Unfortunately, snippets of the project have been leaked and as they pan out on the public space using, of course, amenable media partners, Ghanaians weary of NDC mischief are beginning to understand what is being rolled out.
The sophistication is not difficult to discern; thanks to the knowledge about the party we are dealing with in our body politic.
Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah had cause to call on media practitioners to steer away from throwing the COVID-19 subject to garrulous and cantankerous politicians to maul over on air, their discussions full of venom and devoid of substance.
The medical emergency, such as the one confronting the world today, is beyond the over-flogged morning rituals of political talks by persons who claim to know everything, including the rather specialized field of public health and epidemiology.
We wish to use this opportunity to plead with our frontline medical personnel, especially those managing the data and advising the President, to ignore the disparaging remarks by the ‘know-all’ of Ghana, some of whom are doing the bidding of desperate politicians.
Ghanaians appreciate their indefatigable service and pray for them to continue to be in the trenches of the COVID-19 war until total victory is achieved and the beast killed.