Cover page of Kwamena Ahwoi's 'Working with Rawlings'
Academic integrity, a moral code or ethical policy that commits people in academia to demonstrate high level of honesty and moral behaviour, is a virtue that every person in the academic circle, regardless of his personal beliefs, cannot flout at his own will.
It is also the code that has safeguarded historic facts for centuries, but for which people would have fed the world with their own self-created falsehoods.
One is not necessarily bound to do sing praises for what his beliefs frown upon. That nonetheless, one is bound to be truthful to the facts, even if it goes against his beliefs, so long as the person decides to swim in the pool of academia.
That is why we find it strange that no mean a person than an academic professor will deliberately flout his own moral codes, throw virtue to the dogs and with open arms embrace vice.
NPP not a lover, NDC not a foe
That the governing New Patriotic Party is a political foe to Professor Kwamena Ahwoi is no secret, even to a political foetus in the womb of a woman.
His wicked description of the party in his controversial ‘Working with Rawlings’ memoire tells it all of his deep-seated hatred for the party.
With his dislike for the party, it cannot be used against him anywhere if he decides to use any ‘disparaging’ adjective that intends to paint the party black.
While the NPP is not a friend, we doubt in our minds that members of the NDC and other innocent citizens, such as Kwadwo Afari Gyan, are equally enemies of the old professor.
2008 in Tain
His deliberate misrepresentation of facts, for instance, in his account on the Tain historic third round voting in 2008 (page 183) may appear unpardonable.
It is a known fact that after the second round of voting in 2008, the results stood at 4, 501,466, representing 50.13 per cent, for the NDC’s Prof Mills, while the NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo had 4,478,411, representing 49.87 per cent.
The vote difference was 23,055 while the total number of registered voters in Tain was 53,890.
It was the reason why the EC boss at the time, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, stated that the election was too close to call and that the Tain votes could make a difference, so there was the need to go and hold that election.
For Prof Ahwoi to say that “it was clear as daylight that there was no way the NPP would be able to use the votes in Tain (EVEN IF IT WON BY 100%) to overturn the victory of the NDC” is factually inaccurate and smacks of intellectual and factual dishonesty, and an unprovoked attack on the integrity of Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan.
Intellectual honesty
That is why we believe that even in his deep-seated hatred for the Danquah-Dombo-Busia group, he holds it a duty to protect his own pittance of integrity left to be intellectually honest to the facts when writing.
As a ‘respected’ academic and a celebrated politician, we at Daily Statesman believe, his deliberate distortion of facts to suit a whimsical and diabolic agenda is an insult to academic integrity and smacks of intellectual dishonesty.
The many inaccuracies in the memoir about the country’s political history is a dent on the image of Professor Ahwoi, who, in a desperate move to set a ‘callous agenda of bile’ to please whoever, has had his ego deeply bruised by the very people he sought to please.
That three of the ‘Babies with sharp teeth’ he claims to have recruited and trained to suppress the NDC founder have come out to dissociate themselves from the controversial literary piece, and the unfriendly words used by senior cadre and NDC Chairman of Volta Regional Council of Elders, Dan Abodakpi, should let Prof Ahwoi know that Ghanaians do not have short memory and will not let his factual dishonesty pass unattended to.
