NDC Rejection of Deadly Ejura Shooting Inquiry Panel Is Inconsequential

It is all too characteristically farcical for the leadership of a political party that, while in power, never established any truth- and justice-seeking commissions of inquiry into the deaths of even prominent local and national figures like Messrs. J B Danquah-Adu and Peter Kenyenso, to name only a couple of dozens, to be self-righteously pretending to either believe in or to be interested in the democratic and constitutional rule of law and justice, by cavalierly presuming to lecture and tutor President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on how to bring justice to bear on the pates of the criminal perpetrators of the sort of violence and mayhem that resulted in the apparent brutal assassination of 45-year-old Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed and some two other social activists and/or demonstrators in Ejura, the well-known yam-growing township in the Sekyeredumasi District of the Asante Region (See “Minority Reject[sic] Ministry-Led Inquiry into Ejura Shooting Incident” Modernghana.com 6/30/21).

The National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority, led by Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, wants Article 278 of the country’s 1992 Republican Constitution to be followed to the letter vis-à-vis the establishment of any inquiry into the Deadly Ejura Hostilities, in which some two anti-government demonstrators were reportedly gunned down by a collaborative team of military and police officers. Now, the problem that the Haruna Iddrisu Gang has in pushing through with its call for the strict pursuance of Article 278 of the Constitution is the fact that the latter article has already been appropriated by Nana Akufo-Addo in the President’s establishment of the Commission of Inquiry that investigated the Ayawaso-West-Wuogon byelection hostilities some two, or so, years ago. The latter Commission, it may be vividly recalled, was chaired by Justice Emile Short, the retired Appeals Court Judge and former Commissioner for the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). The other two members on the Short Commission were Prof. Kofi Abotsi, Secretary to the Short Commission, and Mrs. Justice Henrietta Osei-Bonsu, shortly to be elevated to the Supreme Court and her latter title and post by President Akufo-Addo.

Unlike the Ambrose Dery-led Commission of Inquiry, headed by the Minister of the Interior, which has been given only 10 days to investigate and report its findings and recommendations to the President, the Short Commission had 30 days or one month within which to report its findings and recommendations. This, undoubtedly, has something to do with the urgency and the heavy pressure to which the President has been subjected, in the wake of the recent high spate of violence that has flared up in the country, entailing a combination of the political opposition-instigated #FixTheCountry diarrheal economic sabotage campaign in the form of multi-fronted demonstrations in several towns and cities across the country, and the rampant and apparently reckless open season of armed robbery and unprovoked killings, including bullion van attacks, which a cynical and criminally oriented opposition leaderships of various, largely left-leaning, parties have glibly and cynically attributed to acute unemployment induced by President Akufo-Addo’s steely determination to rid the country of the environmentally destructive activities of illegal miners, or Galamseyers, that have rendered most of the country’s hitherto pristine and potable waterbodies undrinkable and unusable.

The problem with the Haruna Iddrisu Gang’s call for an Emile Short type of Commission of Inquiry investigation of the Deadly Ejura Hostilities is the fact that, characteristically, in spite of the prompt and clockwork diligence with which the celebrated Short Commission executed its mandate, nevertheless, many prominent opposition politicians in the vanguard ranks of the National Democratic Congress, still found a lot of grievances which they claimed had shortchanged the compositional balance and credibility of the Short Commission. One notorious burly but cranially challenged NDC-Member of Parliament from the Greater-Accra Region, for example, questioned why the self-disgraced and grossly incompetent passionately pro-NDC retired Chairman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, had not been invited by President Akufo-Addo to seat on the Short Commission. The NDC leaders, including Mr. Iddrisu, would also question the Constitutional right of the President to appropriate his discretionary powers to decide which of the recommendations of the Short Commission required prompt approval and implementation or did not warrant or merit the same, each and every one of such decision, of course, squarely predicated on the strength and substance of the evidence upon which such recommendations had been based.

As well, the problem that we have going along with the call by the Haruna Iddrisu Gang of NDC Parliamentarians is that the group is calling for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry headed or chaired by either a current serving bona fide member of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) or a retired justice of a superior court of the land, at the same time that these NDC leaders have been telling the nation in recent weeks and months that the Anin-Yeboah-presided SCOG lacks the requisite credibility to hold itself as such. A situation which may very well have factored into Nana Akufo-Addo’s decision to have Interior Minister Dery chair the Commission of Inquiry into the Deadly Ejura Hostilities. My own well-considered contention here is that the kleptocratic leaders of the National Democratic Congress cannot eat their proverbial cake and have it at the same time. More so, when these NDC leaders cannot point to a single instance of violent and/or deadly hostility that occurred under the watch of the party’s last two leaders, namely, President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, and President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama for which either of these two leaders established a Commission of Inquiry to bring justice to the hurt and aggrieved citizens of our nation.

I mean, don’t we all vividly remember such flagrant instances of violent hostilities and mayhem as Talensi, Atiwa (Akyem-Kwabeng), Akyem-Akwatia and Wassa-Amenfi, to name only just a handful? And then, of course, how about the point-blank shooting assassinations of Mr. Peter Kenyenso, the Mahama-appointed extant District Chief Executive of Nkwanta-South, presently in the Oti Region, and Mr. J B Danquah-Adu, both of these glaring cases of state-sponsored rubout or Mafia-style assassinations of the most heinous order? In short, these NDC Parliamentary Ali Babas must not be allowed to pretend as if there exist two separate legal systems and standards for measuring the leadership caliber of politicians of Ghana’s two major political parties. No way!

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 30, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]