Martin Amidu Is Being Disingenuous – Part 1

I am writing this commentary on the just-published rejoinder by the former Independent Special Prosecutor without access to the Internet or the Worldwide Web (WWW), so I may not be current or up to date with whatever else Mr. Martin ABK Amidu may have further written and published vis-à-vis his apparent running battle with those whom he considers to be architects of the near Akufo-Addo Waterloo that became widely known as the Agyapa Royalties Deal. Where the former Independent Special Prosecutor comes in regards his very controversial assessment of the proposed mortgaging of the country’s extractive mineral resources in the form of the report titled “Agyapa Royalties Transaction Corruption Risk Assessment,” whose submission protocol he deliberately flouted in a clearly malicious attempt to facilitate the resurgence of the then flagging and waffling electioneering campaign fortunes of former President John Dramani Mahama, the 2020 Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the most formidable challenger in the aforementioned election to President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The 3-page – actually, two-and-half-page – rejoinder, which is titled “Do Not Defame Martin Amidu in the Propaganda to Nominate a New Special Prosecutor: By ABK Amidu,” is embedded in a news report about the aforementioned Amidu article and is captioned “Akufo-Addo Has Nominated a Surrogate as Special Prosecutor – Martin Amidu” Ghanaweb.com 4/29/21). The dismissed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in the John Evans Atta-Mills-led government of the National Democratic Congress raises several significant concerns in his rejoinder which ought to be taken seriously by President Akufo-Addo, the dastard and flagrant albeit clearly abortive attempt to collapse his government by the man he so laudably and graciously rescued from effective National Democratic Congress-sponsored proscription notwithstanding.

I am not the least flabbergasted, however, that the protagonist of his latest battle with the Akufo-Addo-occupied Jubilee House is Mr. Gabriel “Gabby” Otchere-Darko, the man who may very well scuttle the heady possibility of a Mahamudu Bawumia presidential-election victory in December 2024. I have said this several times before and, once again, do repeat the same: that the handwriting was on the wall long before Nana Addo Dankwa succeeded and acceded to the Presidency, that any damnable possibility of derailing the resonant performance success of his government was highly likely to be sinisterly and nihilistically engineered and executed by the President’s own much younger first-cousin, Mr. Gabriel Asare Otchere-Darko. Mr. Amidu does not specifically or directly name the proprietor of the so-called Africa Legal Associates LLC, but it is inescapably and crystal clear that he is referring to Mr. Otchere-Darko when he adumbrates on the fact that the President’s cousin has secretly been attending cabinet meetings at Jubilee House and scandalously preempting protocol or the procedural routine via which government appointments are made, deliberated upon and processed through traditionally established channels for ultimate media consumption by the general public.

The apparently cavalier breach of cabinet and ministerial protocol ought to be taken seriously by the Presidency, if the integrity of this otherwise visionary and very progressive Akufo-Addo Administration is desirous of leaving a lasting legacy in its wake. Where I vehemently disagree with the former Prosecutor, who did not really prosecute any worthwhile or significant cases to warrant his egomaniacal moral grandstanding is on the questions and subjects of whether, indeed, the newly nominated Independent Special Prosecutor, Mr. Kissi Agyebeng, is a presidential surrogate or not and, as well, the issue of whether, indeed, there is a provable pall of “Cultural” or “Civic” and “Political” Silence overhanging the social landscape of the country. Whether Mr. Agyebeng is a veritable presidential surrogate or toady, as Mr. Amidu so cynically claims, is apt to be proven or disproved not temporally very distant from now by the relative performance of the man.

But that Mr. Agyebeng is contemporaries and chummy with some key players in the abortive Agyapa Mineral Royalties Deal and Legon Law faculty Mates, has absolutely no relevance to how Mr. Agyebeng performs as Independent Special Prosecutor. After all, how many law faculties or university departments, aside from Legon, existed in the country until very recently? And largely because Rawlings-leashed “revolutionaries” like Messrs. Amidu, Obed Asamoah, Tsatsu Tsikata and Kwamena and Ato Ahwoi were in charge of our national destiny for some two protracted decades. As the common saying goes: “The real taste of the pudding inheres in the eating of the same.” Deviously and strategically attempting to prejudice the general public, and perhaps the Parliamentary Appointments Committee (PAC), against the newly nominated Independent Special Prosecutor is highly unlikely to gel, even though in the case of Mr. Amidu, the prejudicial propaganda spiel crafted and executed by Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of Mr. Amidu’s own political party, the National Democratic Congress, worked to good and far-reaching effect.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

May 4, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]