Who Killed Arkaah?

The killer of the late Vice President of the Republic of Ghana Kow Nkensen Arkaah, is probably walking close to readers still a free man, six long years after the offence. The police who promised heaven and earth to bring the hit-and-run offender to book have now forgotten entirely about it, while family members of the late Vice-President seem to have given all to God in a typical Ghanaian pessimism.
The Heritage tabled come questions to the Greater Accra Regional Commander ACP, Akrofi Asiedu at his office on Wednesday to find out the whereabouts of Arkaah's docket, and ascertain whether any suspects have been arrested for the cause of his mysterious death.

Commander Asiedu replied that the police administration cold not trace the whereabouts of the docket adding that no arrest has also been made, but assured newsmen that the case has not died a natural death as the public might be thinking.

In its quest to unravel the late Arkaah's death, the Heritage last month went to the Convention People's Party headquarters to find out what the party had done so far to unravel Arkaah's mystery death and what the party intended doing to bring the truth out.

The Heritage was told that the CPP played its part during the funeral and therefore had nothing to do with the unraveling of the truth about his death since it was a family affair.

The question in the minds of many Ghanaians is, if an important personality like the late Vice-President, the number two man of the nation, could be killed under very suspicious circumstances and the matter left to die a natural death, observers fear, the ordinary man beating the sand in the sun daily is not safe at all. Kwabena Ampofi, a CPP activist in the Eastern region, when reminded of Arkaah's death, exclaimed: “Are we safe?”

Kow Nkensen Arkaah, Vice President of the Republic from January 07-1993 to January 1997, got seriously injured when a Mercedes Benz in which he was being driven got crashed by another vehicle in a loop at Cantonments, a suburb of Accra. Fatally injured, the ex-veep was rushed to the 37 Military Hospital after he had been noticed. He died about a week after but not until the newly elected president of the country, John Agyekum Kufuor, had visited him.

Whoever was driving the other car involved in the accident could not have been seriously injured; after all he drove away leaving the mangled Mercedes and the dying septuagenarian inside. That made initial investigations lead to provisional conclusions that the matter was a hit-and-run case. In fact, a theory was additionally proposed to the effect that certain elements in the defeated National Democratic Congress (NDC) government with whom Mr Arkaah was at contemptible loggerheads had planned and executed the hit-and-run to near-perfection.

Such was the anguish, disgust and shock that Mr Arkaah's untimely death unleashed on Ghanaians that it pitched the frenzy with which people looked forward to being told.

People were even more eager to see the perpetrator or perpetrators brought to book, if indeed, somebody deliberately or even carelessly hit Mr Arkaah and left him unattended to. Even the asters to find out whether it was caused through the old man's own inaction or fault was nonetheless small.

Unfortunately, however, the overwhelming craze for purely partisan politics, emerging issues and the short memory of the average Ghanaian have combined to consign the Arkaah's death to the dunghill of forgotten heroes.

When he died, he was animated in a moving scenario. Not quite three years after, his wife, Marian also died, was animated and the matter was salved beyond recovery.