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18.02.2021 Feature Article

Atuguba Is Not from Kyebi, Mr. Abongo!

Atuguba Is Not from Kyebi, Mr. Abongo!
18.02.2021 LISTEN

Relatively arrivant legal specialists like Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, the teenage father, must be careful not to spoil for a battle the most difficult of which has already been fought by legal lights whose knowledge of and familiarity with the law far dwarf the ken of this Mahama-minted second-banana legal maven or presumptuous pretender to the same (See “Dominic Ayine’s Comments about Supreme Court Irresponsible – Lawyer Gyan” Happy 98.9 FM / Ghanaweb.com 2/18/21). Indeed, if the former Deputy Attorney-General really appreciated the established position of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) in the matter of postelection adjudication or judication, he would not have bothered to waste his own time and that of the rest of us well-educated and gainfully employed Ghanaian citizens hogging media spotlight, space and time in a peevish and scandalous bid to going absolutely nowhere with the patently DOA – that is Dead-On-Arrival – error-fraught Presidential-Election Petition by an irredeemably hopeless ego-tripping Mr. John “Expedition-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama.

Dr. Ayine would also have since long learned to his own personal edification and sobriety that when it comes to election-related grievances, the last place on Earth to seek redress on the part of any Ghanaian politician and/or citizen is the edifice and premises of the Supreme Court of Ghana. And guess what? It was one of Dr. Ayine’s own northern-descended clansmen, by the name of Justice William Atuguba, who etched this edict in stone in what has globally become known as the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition. This label or description is somewhat of a misnomer because the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, filed and led by the now-President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, actually took place in the first eight months of 2013, and it was both unprecedented, being also that it was the very first of its kind, as well as the most morally outrageous of its kind on the African Continent.

We must also hasten to point out that the fault, if there was really any, came from a visibly jittery judicial system and an establishment that had become enervated and spineless by the deliberately targeted and viciously orchestrated barbaric abduction and Mafia-style summary execution of the roundly and globally condemned assassination of the Three Akan-Descended Accra High Court Judges, to wit, Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong and Frederick Poku-Sarkodie. It is one of the indelible and morally depraved and unpardonable legacies of the Rawlings-Tsikata Revolution, for the woeful want of a better terminology, of course. And that darkest day in the annals of Ghana’s judicial system and establishment was June 30, 1982.

But what we are specifically concerned with here is what has widely become known as THE ATUGUBA PRINCIPLE, which simply states that in all things electoral or post-electoral, the last place on Earth, that is, Ghana’s part or portion of the Earth, for any aggrieved politician to self-righteously presume to seek objective and definitive redress or relief, you guessed right, Dear Reader, is the Supreme Court of Ghana. It was indubitably a very dangerous precedent for any court or judicial panel to set. But it was, nevertheless, set all the same; and by a northern-descended presiding SCOG jurist blindly and adamantly in favor of another northern-descended Ghanaian citizen who also happened to be the incumbent Interim-President of the day, to boot.

You see, what is laughable here is the rather facile presumption that, somehow, THE ATUGUBA PRINCIPLE only applies to grievances or plaints filed with the SCOG by Ghanaians of “Kabonga Descent,” which obviously translates as Ghanaians of primarily Akan descent. What Mahama Posse operatives like Messrs. Ayine, Tsatsu Tsikata, Anthony “Tony” Lithur and the rest of the NDC’s Hoodlum Pack would have Ghanaians believe is that THE ATUGUBA PRINCIPLE was specially and uniquely tailored for the political detraction of Giant Dwarfs like the “Little Man from Kyebi.” Which is rather funny because it is tantamount to yours truly saying that the one who concocts the poisonous potion or brew is constitutionally and inalienably exempt from the vintage taste of the same.

Dr. Ayine has virulently accused the Kwasi Anin-Yeboah Supreme Court of coming to the Mahama 2020 Presidential-Election Petition with “predetermined intent.” Now, this is a rather criminal and asinine accusation to make because being naturally and logically armed with THE ATUGUBA PRINCIPLE is decidedly the most perfect thing to do. Allahu Akbar, Wallaahihi!!!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

February 18, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]

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