A Creative Arts Spokesperson for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Okyere-Darko, also known as KOD, has strongly warned the youth against thinking coups and revolutions are the answers to their burning questions about governance, accountability, and the economy.
To buttress this, the media and fashion star spoke about one of the excesses of the revolution that he experienced.
“These young people have only read stories and not experienced it [coups]. They speak based on what they read [about] how things were done back in the day,” he bemoaned. “It wasn’t easy.”
He told a story of when he was four or five years old when the prison’s church was being out-doored.
“My mother, working together with some ladies, was baking bread and cooking kenkey for the inauguration. Some soldiers showed up from nowhere in a Pinzgauer, a very popular truck from back in the day the military used. They wanted to take the food away.
“And my mother was a no-nonsense woman, there was no way she was going to allow that to happen. Her reasoning was: ‘The food was meant for a purpose, if you want food, maybe I could give you some to eat but if you want to take everything away, no, that won’t happen’.”
KOD
In the heat of the moment, he revealed, “This particular young soldier used the butt of his AK-47 to hit my mom’s forehead, I was standing right there as a child of about five years, and shot at her, also. Luckily, she didn’t die.”
He noted that his mother was injured from the knock of the gun but the shooting did not pierce her flesh.
The founder and CEO of the popular fashion brand Nineteen57 underlined “In a democratic dispensation some of these things will not happen,” compared to the times he grew up, the son of a director of prisons, living close to the State House, at the time.
KOD argued what the young officer did was not sanctioned by anyone but because of the temperature of the movement, because of the times they lived in, there were elements within the military who took advantage and gave the government itself a bad name.
“There were certain things that happened that then Chairman [Jerry John] Rawlings was personally not responsible for,” the NDC spokesperson doubled down. “People just took advantage of the situation.”
A revolution, KOD strongly warned, “will take us back”.
The radio star urged citizens, especially young people, to use the democratic process, social media, and protests to register their frustrations and displeasure.
“See what happened in Kenya some months ago, which was replicated in Nigeria, I believe to a certain extent. It was young people. It wasn’t the elderly who decided to get on the streets. It was young people who thought they were getting frustrated and they wanted to be heard and a lot of changes were made.”
KOD
KOD said he “really respected how the Kenyan government handled that, quite many African leaders won’t do that”.
Seeing as Ghana goes to the polls on December 7, 2024, Kofi Okyere-Darko encouraged voters to “register, look at your circumstance, look at where you’ve come from, look at how far we’ve come, look at how far you’ve come, look at the next step, and then [ask] does it favor you to go to the left or right? And then you advise yourself”.
Why KOD Stopped Supporting Akufo-Addo
KOD recalled the days he believed in and supported then-presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
It all started when KOD got a call from a great friend and brother Gabby Otchere-Darko, who informed him Nana Akufo-Addo was going to run for office and that the platform he wants to use is the creative arts, adding that he later had a conversation with His Excellency.
“That was in 2008. The platform that launched Nana’s campaign was called Believe in Ghana,” he said. “I was one of the orchestrators of the platform.”
The media and fashion icon underlined Nana Akufo-Addo’s history of having a certain relationship with the creative arts: with people like [Afrobeats icon] Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti.
KOD intimated he was amazed at all these and thought Nana Akufo-Addo understood the orange economy, the creative arts, and what he told him [KOD] he’d do once he got into office, so he rallied support for the then New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer.
Another reason he supported Akufo-Addo was that “at the time, we hadn’t seen so much, in terms of support from the government, for the creative arts industry” and he thought Akufo-Addo’s government would be different.
For the campaign, KOD said, wherever they went, they would have a show, or musical performance, that took place 2 to 3 hours before the campaign or rally itself.
“Everyone wants to go out and listen to music, so once they’re out, that platform was used to communicate to the people,” the Nineteen57 founder explained, noting, however, “It didn’t work [Akufo-Addo didn’t win the election].”
KOD said that was the end of his support for Akufo-Addo.
“After 2008, I took a backseat. After the Believe in Ghana project, that was it for me,” he said.
His reason was not because the project failed but because he went through something.
“Some of my colleagues at Radio Gold where I worked [since] like a year after the station’s inception were not too happy with me: ‘Kofi, you’ve always been with us and you went to support Nana Akufo-Addo’. So they proposed to kick me out. If it [Akufo-Addo’s campaign] had succeeded, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to Radio Gold so [the question was:] ‘Why come back?’”
KOD
He said the only reason he did not lose his job was because “my boss and mentor Mr [Kwasi Sainti] Baffoe-Bonnie” intervened, arguing KOD “is not a malicious person” and was not seen using abusive language in his campaign for Akufo-Addo.
“Again, the great Prof Mills, His Excellency, also, said, ‘Kofi’s my son’. So if he’s supported one of the candidates, this man’s great heart tells him that: Two great people were running for the office of the land, and I chose one side. It’s okay if I didn’t support him.”
KOD
“That’s what changed it for me. His [Prof Mills] heart,” KOD emphasized, explaining his permanent shift from supporting the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Currently, KOD is a newly appointed Creative Arts Spokesperson for the NDC’s 2024 campaign to return John Dramani Mahama to the seat of power.
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