Osei-Mensah Must Be Promoted to Cabinet Status

You may not like him, in particular the Jihadist-minded youths of Asante-Ejura Zongo / Nzongo who unwisely decided to take the law into their own hands, in the wake of the apparently brutal murder or, perhaps, assassination of 45-year-old Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, alias Macho Kaaka. But you have to give it to the man, that is, you have to frankly acknowledge the fact that Mr. Simon Osei-Mensah is the kind of Regional Minister that all the 16 Regions of Ghana need. When he appeared before the Koomson Committee, he did exactly what any Regional Minister who is literally on top of his game would do, which was to jealously protect the identity or identities of the informant or informants whose fleet-footed intelligence work may very well have saved the inhabitants of this major yam-growing township near Asante-Mampong from going up in flames.

Asked to name or identify his informant, Mr. Osei-Mensah, as it is to be expected of a consummate professional, flatly refused, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that he was obligated to protect the identities and safety of those who risked their lives daily to make and keep the peace of Ghana’s most populous and economically significant region (See “Ejura Probe: 4 BN Commander, Regional Police Command to Face Committee Today” Modernghana.com 7/7/21). It was an anonymous informant, very likely known to the Asante Regional Minister, who had reported that real catastrophe imminently loomed over the horizon in Ejura, unless at least a platoon of crackerjack soldiers was dispatched from Kumasi, the Asante Regional Capital, to the latter municipality to preempt the same and thus save the residents of this important ancient commercial township and the day, as it were, in the chaotic wake of the brutal murder of 45-year-old Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed – aka Macho Kaaka – on or about June 30.

Well, we have since learned from a neighbor of the slain man who says that she was preparing to observe her early morning Islamic prayer devotion, when a very loud noise made by a human voice drew her out of her house and outside, whereby she shockingly chanced upon the elder brother of Macho Kaaka, or the brother of the deceased man, it is not very clear which is which, dragging over the ground what clearly appeared to be the badly battered body of the deceased from one lighted part of her neighbor’s compound to a darker or unlighted part of the same compound. This naturally roiled up the suspicion of the slain man’s neighbor, who has also suggested per her close observation of the erratic behavior of the slain man’s brother, for quite some time now, that the apparent killer of Macho Kaaka had been showing visible signs of dementia prior to the apparent murder of the latter.

Naturally, the aggrieved members of Macho Kaaka’s family have lapsed into a funk of denial and have flatly rejected the eyewitness testimony of their neighbor. Some of the kinsmen and women of the slain man have even dared the eyewitness to appear before the general public and lay her hand on the Al-Quran and solemnly swear as a backup to her testimony, almost as if this gesture or religious ritual alone is apt to change the reality of the enormity of the crime committed or the question of who the real culprit or criminal suspect may be. One thing, though, is for certain. And it is the fact that the alleged slayer of Macho Kaaka may very well need to be promptly subjected to a battery of psychiatric and/or psychological examination in order to ascertain what the state of mind of the fingered Macho Kaaka sibling might have been at the time of the slaying of Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed.

For observers and even distant watchers of the Fourth Republican Ghanaian political landscape, what is equally significant to note is the fact that none of the organizers or leaders of the protest demonstrators who emerged in the wake of the slaying of Macho Kaaka are known to have come public to vehemently deny such intelligence or allegation as the fact that these demonstrators had been dead-set on setting the Ejura Police Station alight, as well as burning and charring to death the alleged two criminal suspects who had reportedly been picked up by the Ejura police.

Even more convincingly, a doctor at the Ejura Hospital or Health Clinic reports that he was forced by some of the protesters to release the mortal remains of Macho Kaako for an Islamic burial, which has to be done within 24 hours of the expiration of the slain man, according to Muslim law. The obverse implication of such age-old but patently anachronistic religious practice is that the critically and forensically needed autopsy to ascertain the precise manner and situation under which Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed met his death have been flagrantly and summarily eviscerated. What this means is that the scientific proof or knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the death of Macho Kaaka may never be known.

Which is tragically ironic because the truth behind the way and manner in which he gave up the proverbial ghost is what we are reliably informed, Macho Kaaka’s family members, relatives and friends claim to be direly in need of. Which now appears not to be necessarily true. Rather, the Macho Kaaka family appears to be in search of their own acceptable version of the truth of how their kinsman expired or met his demise, as Ghanaians are wont to say.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 10, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]