Why Is Sam Jonah Peeved by Akufo-Addo’s Phenomenal Success? – Part 2

In the critical matter of judicial dysfunction in the country, perhaps Mr. Jonah needs to have taken cognizance of the unorthodox and illegal use of private detectives and privately hired and taxpayer-funded investigative journalists by then-President Mahama to both undermine and vindictively destroy the careers of Superior Court Judges and Magistrates, while at the same time deliberately and criminally underfunding our National Security Agencies, in the process effectively crippling our entire National Security Apparatus. What is equally important to point out here is that to this day, Ghanaian taxpayers do not even know how much of their fiscal resources was forked up or criminally diverted to underwrite the dubious sting operations of the Anas Aremeyaw Anas-owned so-called Tiger-Eye Private Investigators Limited Liability Company.

It is also rather weird to hear our self-styled Senior Citizen stake the comical claim that Ghanaians have been silenced and, somehow, prevented from boldly and fearlessly criticizing the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party. Even the self-glorifying and self-infatuated Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni, the former Multimedia investigative correspondent, who faked a personal security threat not very long ago and went into a self-imposed exile in South Africa, has been back at work for quite a long and considerable while now and recently conducted an undercover investigation that resulted in the summary dismissal of the Head of the Legal Department of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA). So, what really is this “Culture of Silence” that “Sir” Sam Jonah is talking about here? As one social media commentator recently suggested, “Nobody has silenced or is silencing anybody in present-day Ghana. Ghanaians talk whenever they want to talk. Period!”

Maybe Mr. Jonah, the bona fide National Democratic Congress’ stalwart and heavyweight operative feels very worried, perhaps even traumatized, by the fact that a significant majority of Ghanaians appear to envisage the Akufo-Addo Administration, for the most part, as the most competent and the very best of its kind in Fourth-Republican Ghana. If, indeed, as he sarcastically and snidely claims, Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution unwisely promotes “Executocracy,” the real and most obviously logical question to ask here is tersely thus: Who created this weird and peculiar animal called “Executocracy” but “Sir” Sam Jonah himself and the rest of the National Democratic Congress’ hoodlum pack of unconscionable looters of state-owned real-estate and other landed properties? And for whose pleasure, by the way, but that of the late President Jerry John Rawlings and his Amen Corner praise-singers, assigns, minions and hangers-on?

As well, when he talks about the monstrosity that is the 1992 Constitution vis-à-vis excessive Executive Powers, the former Managing-Director of the Asante (Ashanti) Goldfields Corporation (AGC) also needs to highlight the salient and most relevant reasons why the leaders of the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired New Patriotic Party literally walked out of the deliberations of the Fourth Republican Constituent Assembly. If, indeed, 85-percent of Ghanaians recently polled by an Afrometer Survey conducted by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) are fully convinced that our judiciary and our judicial system are thoroughly and irredeemably corrupt, this obviously has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with the fact that the 1992 Republican Constitution mandates the Executive or Presidential appointment of our Supreme Court Judges and, in particular, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG).

You see, even in the most advanced of global democracies like the United States of America (USA), Justices of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) and the Chief Justice of the United States’ Supreme Court are routinely nominated and appointed by The Executive President, after having been vetted by the Upper-House of the United States’ Congress or The Senate, with the staunchly partisan backing of Congressional Representatives from the political party of the sitting President or the Chief Executive of the State or the Federal Government. It is also rather farcical and downright scandalous for Mr. Jonah to so facilely and cavalierly presume to pontifically fault President Akufo-Addo for the generally poor or defective delivery of Justice in the country, in particular the quality of Justice delivery in the Commercial Courts, where the critic appears to be personally heavily invested and which, by the way, was not even established on the watch or under the tenure of President Akufo-Addo.

Plus, equally significant, Nana Akufo-Addo is not the only or the very first legally trained Ghanaian citizen to have assumed the Presidency. Mr. John Agyekum-Kufuor and Dr. John Evans Atta-Mills, Nana Akufo-Addo’s Fourth Republican predecessors, were also professionally and academically trained lawyers. To thus make an exceptional and an exclusive case that truly has historical and logical relevance, Mr. Jonah needs to thoroughly research his rather grandiose claims by drawing up a comparative analysis of how efficiently the Commercial Courts ran or operated under the previous tenures of Messrs. Agyekum-Kufuor and Atta-Mills. Else, what he would have ignobly succeeded in doing here is to have jejunely exposed his abject ignorance of the true state of the country’s Commercial Judicial Culture and/or System and the latter’s performance under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 29, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]