Dafeamekpor May Be Too Full of His Own Self-Importance

He has been publicly making quite a slew of legal blunders that makes one wonder whether, indeed, the South-Dayi Constituency’s Member of Parliament from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) graduated from a government-accredited law school in Ghana, much less passed his bar or legal practice examinations in 2009, as Mr. Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor so proudly claims. So, it is quite a wonder that this talkative political nuisance should be calling the legal credentials of Mr. Paul Adom-Otchere into question (See “ ‘If I’m Not a Lawyer, Kwamena Ahwoi Is also Not a Lawyer’ – Adom-Otchere Tackles Dafeamekpor” Ghanaweb.com 6/14/22).

The last time that I read and wrote about him, Mr. Dafeamekpor was jejunely arguing with Attorney-General Godfred Yeboah-Dame over the question of whether the Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah-presided Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) was obligated to giving a full-hearing to all cases that were brought before the Apex Court. The all-too-savvy contention of the Attorney-General was that the highest court of the land was not obligated to giving a full-hearing to each and every lawsuit that was brought before it, except for only those that the jurists of the SCOG deemed to be of great moment, merit or significance.

For the South-Dayi NDC-MP, the court was obligated to hear out each and every legal suit brought before it. Attorney-General Yeboah-Dame, on the other hand, was of the practicably most sound view that too much of the time of the Supreme Bench Jurists was needlessly spent on dealing with patently frivolous lawsuits such that the court was often left with inadequate time to handle some of the most significant cases and matters of national interest and sociocultural and political moment. And, of course, matters of great economic importance as well.

At any rate, any lawyer who claims to be as practically and/or professionally qualified to practice law in the land or the country because s/he has attended the Ghana Law School and passed his professional practice examinations with distinction, would not be carrying an argument or holding forth in the patently amateurish manner in which Mr. Dafeamekpor was pointlessly doing against a man or cabinet appointee who was unarguably far more conversant and versatile with the intricate dynamics of the judicial system and establishment and culture than the critic who imperiously presumed that he could cavalierly lecture both the members of the Apex Court and the Attorney-General on how to treat or deal with lawsuits that are brought before the court. You see, Mr. Yeboah-Dame was realistic enough to recognize the obvious need for Apex Court Jurists to refer a significant percentage of all cases brought before them to the lower courts of adjudication or adjudicature.

Now, listening to the South-Dayi NDC-MP, the listener would not have known that, indeed, Mr. Dafeamekpor had attended the University of Ghana’s Law School and even successfully secured his license to practice law shortly after graduating from the Ghana Law School, located at Makola, in the Accra-Central District. Likewise, the Dear Reader may not have prepared him-/herself for this but, the inescapable fact of the matter is that anybody, Ghanaian citizen or non-Ghanaian citizen, hearing the name of “Rockson-Nelson” Dafeamekpor begins to wonder whether a man who prefers to pad up his name with multiple European nominal identifiers or markers could not very likely be suffering from a psychological crisis of identity. Maybe this self-infatuated opposition party machine operative needs to be informed that he may be better known than many of his peers in Ghana’s Parliament not because he exudes remarkable wit or the sort of charm that is envisaged to accompany the same but, rather, precisely and primarily because Mr. Dafeamekpor sports such an odd and weird combination of European as “Rockson-Nelson.”

At any rate, when the nationally renowned and popular host of Metro-TV’s “Good Evening Ghana” (GEG) current affairs program discusses law or legal matters in the “Touchscreen” segment of his widely watched and massively patronized newsmagazine show, Mr. Adom-Otchere is absolutely in no way practicing law and does not pretend to be practicing law, at least as far as I can see. But, of course, the GEG host is inalienably entitled to discussing matters of socioeconomic, political and cultural significance like each and every citizen of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. A discussion of pressing legal matters in public in either the electronic media or even off-the-air, and up-close and personal and closely based on even the most rudimentary of research data vis-à-vis all the legal issues that he decides to take up or discuss on his program or show is all that matters, so long as he is not seen to be egregiously misinforming the general listening and/or viewing public.

In his rather downright facile and inescapably infantile attempt to impugn the credibility of the host of “Good Evening Ghana,” Mr. Dafeamekpor does not point to a single instance in which he found Mr. Adom-Otchere to be in flagrant breach of any legal interpretation. So, what is really the beef or grievance of the South-Dayi, Volta Region, NDC-MP here? Nothing short of pure and gratuitous hatred for Mr. Adom-Otchere, if the Dear Reader were to ask yours truly.

*Visit by blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

June 18, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]