Encounter with a troop of monkeys predicts election 2020 Supreme Court verdict

How l love using analogies and personal experiences to home in the essence of some of my publications to the public readers.

Without the least desire to go ahead of the apex court of Ghana to tell how the outcome of the election 2020 petition shall be, l will however narrate a true story in case it will give any clues to Ghanaians.

Somewhere in 1973, when l was on a summer holiday, thus, long vacation from school, then a student of Kumawu Tweneboa Kodua Secondary School (TKSS), I had to spend about a month on my father's cocoa farm at Wassa Ahyireso in then Western region.

I went there with his nephew Kofi Appiah (deceased) and my elder sibling Kwaku Osei aka Alan Styne (deceased).

On one sunny midday, my father decided to take us around to show us the boundaries of his farmland of which a portion was already under cultivation for cocoa.

We were a company of six. Himself, two labourers, Kofi Appiah, Kwaku Osei and myself. Each person took their cutlass, machete l mean.

It was a thick forest. The land was huge. While showing us around, going through the dense forest, we came across a large troop of monkeys. They were about twenty to thirty metres up above us on the trees. They were in one long single line crossing from one side to the other.

My father who was leading us was the first person to sight the monkeys. He silently made a signal to us to watch the monkeys on the trees. After they had passed, he said he regretted not taking his gun with him when taking us out to show us the boundaries.

If he had taken the gun, he could easily have killed some of the monkeys.

Monkeys are not only a delicacy in Ghana among the Akan tribe but also, they were destroying the corns planted to give shade to newly planted cocoa seedlings.

We had machetes but they were not the relevant weapons at that moment to help us achieve our desire of killing any of the monkeys.

Similarly, how can you go to court to seek to overturn election results without having the relevant facts and evidence grounded in law?

You cannot go to court barehanded as a plaintiff while at the same time expecting to win your case in the hope of been granted the chance to adduce favourable evidence from the defendant in the case.

If such was possible, then it could have been like us seeing the troop of monkeys up above the trees, although without the right weapons, still laying hands on some of them by the mercy of God.

It does not often happen that way. You need the right implements at the right time to achieve your expected goals.

As hoped as we did but could not kill any of the monkeys for any aim we might have had, because we did not have the right weapon, so shall it be with the petitioner for not having the relevant credible, permissible and acceptable facts and evidence grounded in law.

It does not take a rocket scientist to conjecture or conjure the outcome of any situation when you don't have the required implements or facts.

Rockson Adofo

Wednesday, 24 February 2021