Asante-Apeatu Calls the Bluff of Kwaku Annan

This libel and defamation suit may very well go beyond the individual person or personality and reputation of Mr. David Asante-Apeatu, the immediate-past Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service (IGP), because it clearly reverberates towards the courtyard of President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to wit, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, that is, the highest elected public official of the land who both appointed and fired the former IGP, who is presently suing one of the prime media operatives and apparent right-hand man of Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, owner of KenCity Communications Network, parent company of the Oman Radio and Television Network, which includes NET-2 Television Station, which regularly features Mr. Justice Kwaku Annan as its main anchor, cynosure and fixture.

I am here, of course, referring to the seismic but not-altogether-unexpected lawsuit allegedly filed by Mr. Asante-Apeatu, the circumstances surrounding the termination of whose extended professional contract was never made clear to the general Ghanaian public by The Presidency or Jubilee House, that is, by whoever was specifically and/or officially assigned or authorized to do so (See “Former IGP Sues Net 2’s ‘The Seat’ Show Host for Defamation” Ghanaweb.com 7/4/21). Well, in the aforementioned lawsuit, the plaintiff, Mr. Asante-Apeatu, is demanding an unspecified monetary sum in damages. I happened to have accidentally tuned into the particular program in which Mr. Annan, who has claimed several times to be the nephew of the late Mr. Kofi Atta Annan, the legendary Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization (UN), made the claims and shocking charges for which he presently stands accused of defamation by the aforementioned plaintiff.

As I vividly recall, salient among the charges leveled against Ex-IGP Asante-Apeatu was that as the highest uniformed police officer of the land, the latter had been well aware of the dastardly deeds and criminal operations of a cabal of some well-heeled Nigerian nationals or citizens who operated with reckless abandon in both Ghana and their native country and owned several clusters of real-estate properties in the Greater-Accra Metropolitan Area, which these Mafia-like gang of thugs and professional criminals and robber-barons had sold to some current residents at the alleged locations of these properties or had been rented out to the same. Now, two critical questions come to the fore here, namely, the clearly unmistakable implication that the former Supreme Commander of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) provided open and brazen cover or protection for the deadly and criminal activities of the unnamed afore-referenced gang of Nigerian-originated thugs.

In the aforesaid “The Seat” program, Host Kwaku Annan also made the inescapably outrageous claim that the former IGP and the Ghana Police Service establishment had received a patently strange and legally unusual gift-horse in the form and shape of the construction of a police post or station from the aforesaid criminal ring or gang at least part of whose operations, viewers were informed by the host of the aforementioned Net-2 TV program, could be officially and/or formally deemed to be genuine, with the other half incontrovertibly and deliberately working to the detriment of the Sovereign Ghanaian State at large. Now, what most law-abiding Ghanaian citizens would likely be looking forward to learning is the fact of whether, indeed, the aforesaid private construction and gifting of the police post or station ever took place and precisely under what circumstances, as well as the broader implications that the latter “kindly gesture” has had on the general quality of our national security system. Did Jubilee House know about this bizarre and shady arrangement? And what was the official response from Jay-House to the same?

On the aforesaid program, Mr. Annan also hinted at the fact that President Akufo-Addo may have either been deliberately left out of the loop of the incontrovertibly depraved shenanigans between the aforesaid Nigerian criminal ring or the President was being protected from the same for reasons of which the program host intended to apprise the general viewing public in due course. In all likelihood, Ghanaians may be very interested in protecting the integrity of the two parties involved in this lawsuit, in particular both the inalienable free-speech rights and responsibilities of Mr. Justice Kwaku Annan and the image and reputation of the IGP. Ultimately, what is most important here is the revelation of the truth of both the allegations by the host of “The Seat” program, on the one hand, and the fact or otherwise of the involvement of our trusted law-enforcement agency officials in the nation-wrecking activities of the alleged Nigerian criminal ring or organization.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 4, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]