Happy birthday to one of the greatest political icons of our time! A man who is unafraid to speak the truth, regardless of what the offended parties may think or say about him.He understands the importance of not swallowing poison out of fear of offending others. Happy birthday to the unassuming Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan, who is no less a child of providence and wields influence and authority with humility and focus on Ghana. In addition to his humility, he is compassionate and community-minded. People respect the top-draw politician because he rejects the politics of insults. And as a laborer, he believes in fundamentally addressing the transformation of society and the human condition for good. Always smiling, humorous, and kind to a fault, Wofa Yaw has managed through his eleemosynary acts to connect to a wide range of stakeholders and ordinary Ghanaians, adroitly deploying his folksy charm.
He is expressive and expansive in his positions on national issues, especially in the media space, where he’s well respected, along with his wise judgment on national issues that is spot on. He’s fantastic and not biased; as he speaks, he smiles and sometimes laughs. Primitive considerations tend to de-emphasize the essential gravitas of his political viewpoints, but he remains unaffected. He doesn’t break the rules of politics. That’s unvarnished leadership.
People often say that a powerful vision attracts ideas, people, and other resources like a magnet. It creates momentum and the will to make change happen. It inspires individuals, complementary democratic organizations, and institutions to commit, persist, and give their best. This mirrors Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan’s forte. Leveraging these positives, he has deployed impeccable professionalism, discipline, and persistence in changing the traditional narrative of National Democratic politics and in the national space as a respected statesman. He has weighed all relevant metrics to become the longest-serving national organizer of the NDC at both the regional and national level, having served as a regional organizer in the then two regions, Brong Ahafo and Western Regions (now divided into 5 regions). He also served as a deputy national organizer before assuming the position of national organizer. That makes him the longest and one of the most experienced organizers in Ghana’s political landscape.
Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan was a leading member of an executive that won the 2008 and 2012 elections. He lost his bid to continue his good work in the 2014 NDC’s Congress in Kumasi, and interestingly, the party has been in opposition since then. With his age and experience, his party should have taken steps to appoint him and some other founding members of the party to the council of elders, but they have not. Wofa Yaw undoubtedly fulfills all the essential requirements. During a testy period in the nation’s political history, the NDC needed a humble and level-headed senior member to criticize and guide its affairs. It certainly appeared in Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan’s persona. Ghanaians are happy when they hear him speak. His speech sanitizes the airwaves. He’s an authority in local governance and at the grassroots level. Grace upon Grace at 70, sir.
Many certainly have not forgotten that Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan is a dedicated realist and reformer who bridged all gulfs, as exemplified by his selfless stewardship of the NDC Party over the years. That is remarkable, and it speaks to God’s abundant grace in allowing Wofa to produce magical moments and achieve monumental feats in the politics of the NDC, grooming more young people in the party.
In total, Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan has shown a relentless pursuit of socio-political growth and transformation of the human condition. He has done so in a measured and calculated manner, which is noteworthy. In a very diverse, multi-ethnic environment, he’s a detribalized elder; he has thrived on respect for his peers, loyalty, discipline, and uncommon focus. All the same, destiny beckons.
He was a politician who diligently pursued his goals, becoming one of the most experienced and successful politicians of his generation. A mobilization leader is a man with diverse experience in labor relations, party labor, management, and organizational leadership. His background experience approximates grassroots and inter-group relations that spanned decades, an experience that includes a former mobilization leader, a farmer, a football administrator at the national level, and a politician par excellence that has prepared him for the NDC party leadership role as a former national organizer. His imaginative and bold programs for the NDC Party have been a reference point for a generation. Life for some is a skyscraper; for others, it is a modest one, two, or three-story building. However, for some others, the metaphor for the years in their lives is just a bungalow. In the third world, where life expectancy is a miserable forty-something, people of skyscraper years are the very lucky chosen few. Among the very lucky ones who managed to count the years beyond 60 to 70, how many of them have the years counting for them? Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan, former NDC National Organizer, steps on the 70th floor of life today, May 13th. We don’t only count the years for him; it is marvelous in our eyes that the years count as well.
He goes by the name Wofa, which is very uncommon in politics. Those who know say Ghanaians gave him that title in Ghana politics. He shares the title “Wofa” with no one in appreciation of an ‘Everbody Uncle’ who possesses an intelligence uncommon in depth and wisdom, garnished with disarming wit.” If you follow Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyans’ journey so far, you will agree that his dad’s prayer has been following his every step wherever he goes. Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan is not a saint. Like every reformer, he has had his own share of fair and largely unfair criticism for pursuing a path he believed was best for the advancement of the Democratic Party he loves so much. However, those who know him closely will attest to the fact that the man has no bone of conceit in his body. His close friends cut across different tribes, tongues, social classes, and creeds. One thing no one can deny is the fact that Wofa Yaw truly loves his party, the National Democratic Congress. The man’s patriotism remains unshaken despite incidents of vilification from various quarters.
For me, Wofa Yaw symbolizes a period in recent political history that politicians need to revisit in order to find solutions to the current problems, which are not particularly new.
This writer has only scratched the surface in the foregoing paragraphs about the man, Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan, and what he stands for. Some know him much closer than the observer’s view presented here. Those chroniclers (including him) owe it a duty to posterity to tell the true story of a man greatly misunderstood for his selfless actions for the betterment of our political institutions.
Happy 70th birthday, Wofa Yaw Boateng Gyan. It is my sincere prayer that your sincere labour for our fatherland, like those of our heroes and heroines’ past, shall never be in vain.