Mr. Terkper Must Refer to the Atuguba Principle or Doctrine

Silence, it has often been said, is golden. What this maxim really means, of course, is the imperative need for politicians, in our present and particular instance or context, not to speak out of turn. Any inadvisable departure from this golden rule of verbal or rhetorical conduct could almost invariably result in the sort of faux pas created by Mr. Henry Nana Boakye – aka Nana Bee – when the Youth Organizer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), was widely reported, in the auspicious wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous dismissal of the 2020 Presidential-Election Petition filed by former President John “Expedition Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama, to have said that if the former President really desired to have his grievances resolved by any legitimately constituted statutory establishment of the land, then the plaintiff ought to have gone to Parliament, that is, to the seat of our popularly elected Representatives, or the popularly elected Representatives of the Ghanaian people or the Ghanaian citizenry, and not the highest court of the land, to make his case (See “Election Petition: Claims that Court Was Not Avenue for Accountability Strange – Terkper” 3News.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/9/21).

Nana Boakye is clearly wrong on his understanding of the ideological and practical or functional role of Ghana’s National Assembly or House of Representatives. You see, just as Jubilee House, or the Executive Branch of Government primarily exists to ensure the security and socioeconomic development of the country, as well to keep the peace and the rule of law in the country, of course, the Legislative Branch of our Government primarily exists to make all laws governing the conduct of the Business of the People, which functional category, of course, involves the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). You see, the problem with Candidate John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama is that as substantive President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana in 2013, the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, either collusively and/or collaboratively conspired with some members of the William Atuguba-presided panel of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) to flagrantly eviscerate the fundamental role of the Apex Court as the Arbiter or Judicial Institution of Last Resort for the resolution of all law-related grievances or litigations of the land.

In the particular instance herein discussed, Justice Atuguba “strangely” declared that the Supreme Court of Ghana would no longer abide by the statutory or constitutional mandate for which it was established. In effect, as the shortly to become Acting Chief Justice of the SCOG pontifically declared to the orgasmic delight of the then-Interim President Mahama, “All elections are both won and lost at the polling station [or in the polling booth], and not in the courthouse or the courtroom.” It is quite clear, three-quarters of a dozen years later, that a clinically and pathologically myopic Mr. Mahama never the least bit fathomed or foresaw the fact that the legally and morally regressive Atuguba Principle could very well come back to haunt the Second Respondent and his associates and minions at the time. As part of his victory celebration and a bountiful reward for the Atuguba Family, as many of us may vividly recall, a newly confirmed substantive President Mahama would promptly name Dr. Raymond Atuguba, a relative of Justice William Atuguba and a University of Ghana Faculty of Law Lecturer at the time, as Executive-Secretary of the Mahama Presidency.

As of this writing, Dr. Atuguba, who apparently used this bogusly prime opportunity to jazz up his vitae or résumé, is Dean of the Faculty of Law at the nation’s flagship academy. Some ardent Mahama critics have even dared to suggest that this apparent quid-pro-quo pact between the then-President Mahama and Justice Atuguba was a veritable and shameless act of bribery. We are not in any authoritative position to either confirm or impugn the validity of this rather inviting proposition. At the very least, however, there well appears to be an element of credibility to such claim or allegation. Whatever the truth or veracity of the preceding allegation and/or accusation may be, it can absolutely not be gainsaid that it was, indeed, the Atuguba Principle that Mr. Seth Terkper, the former Mahama-appointed Finance Minister, ought to have addressed in his self-righteously tweeted response to an obviously grossly misguided Nana Boakye, and not the patently irrelevant fact of whether or not the Anin-Yeboah-presided SCOG egregiously erred by not invidiously quashing the Atuguba Principle and, in effect, declaring the 2020 Presidential-Election Petitioner to stand way over and above the sacred laws of our land.

You see, it is this kind of ratiocinative disingenuousness on the part of prominent partisan political players like Mr. Terkper that is to blame for the level of tension and confusion raging and sweeping across the land.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

March 11, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]