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09.04.2021 Feature Article

Dafeamekpor Is Out-of-Step with NDC History

Dafeamekpor Is Out-of-Step with NDC History
09.04.2021 LISTEN

The alleged arrest of WhatsApp News Editor David Tamakloe by National Security Agents must not be so swiftly condemned, especially by National Democratic Congress’ parliamentarians and operatives like Mr. Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor (See “Editor of WhatsApp News David Tamakloe Arrested Again; South-Dayi MP Demands His Release” Modernghana.com 4/2/21). That Mr. Tamakloe was reportedly arrested at gunpoint ought to give us some pause and cause for concern. But we need to first learn about the full details of what the arrestee’s crime or, rather, alleged crime, entails before we jump to conclusions or make up any judgments one way or another. But, of course, we also need to bear squarely in mind that the operations of our National Security Agencies are guided, for the most part, by established professional and cultural protocols that far precede the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The aforesaid protocols were, incontrovertibly, established by operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who are paradoxically often insistent on being credited with having founded Ghana’s Fourth-Republican democratic dispensation. It is actually a carryover from the late Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led junta of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), that effectively dominated our political landscape and firmaments throughout most of the 1980s and the early 1990s. and, of course, the undisputed architect of our present National Security System, Apparatus or Machinery is Mr. Rawlings’ cousin Capt. Kojo Tsikata (Ret). It was Capt. Tsikata who, as his cousin Rawlings’ National Security Adviser, renamed the then Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) as the Soviet- or Cuban-styled Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), apparently, in order to give the latter establishment greater coercive or military powers and bite.

As I vividly recall, the Ghana Police Service was also renamed the Ghana Police Force (GPF). There must also have been a change of the uniform worn by the personnel of the newly redesignated Ghana Police Force. We need to put things into their proper contexts and perspectives before opportunistic media-hogging politicians like the South-Dayi parliamentarian jump to such preposterous conclusions as our National Security Agency Operatives being professionally guided by the Rambo culture of Hollywood movies. The Rambo culture or mode of conduct of our National Security Agencies that Mr. Dafeamekpor is alluding to here was indisputably created by the Founding-Fathers of his own political party, namely, the National Democratic Congress.

It is needless to rehash the massive and wanton atrocities perpetrated by the Tsikata-headed Bureau of National Investigations, except to simply riposte Mr. Dafeamekpor’s attempt to lecture the operatives of our National Security Agencies on the timing of their apprehension of citizens and media operatives deemed to be an imminent threat or danger to our national security. Yes, I believe in the democratic and principled application of the legal protocol of Habeas Corpus, whereby any person or citizen charged with any legal or statutory breach is promptly arraigned before a legitimately constituted court of judication in our august Republic. But, of course, how this aspect of our legal system gets implemented or executed must not under any circumstances, whatsoever, be on the say-so of blindly and passionately and pathologically partisan politicians like Mr. Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor.

While until his most recent arrest by operatives reportedly from our National Security Agencies, I was not aware of the fact of WhatsApp News’ Mr. David Tamakloe’s having been arrested in October of last year, nevertheless, what all serious-minded and responsible Ghanaian citizens ought to be discussing presently, are the details of the publication that allegedly led to Mr. Tamakloe’s being picked up by agents from our National Security Agencies the last time around and, even more significantly, what might have changed or provoked the same course of action on the part of our National Security Operatives this time around. We must not irresponsibly jump to conclusions in the manner that the South-Dayi National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament clearly appears to be doing or to have done. Such intemperate tantrum makes an already tense situation in the country even worse, especially coming from a prominent and nationally renowned politician who ought to know far better than ordinary Ghanaian citizens.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 2, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]

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