How Can Franklin Cudjoe “School” Akufo-Addo about Criminal Justice in Ghana?

It goes without saying that he told the incontrovertible and the glaringly obvious truth, when President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo told an oceanic throng of staunch members, supporters and sympathizers of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), ahead of the June 27, 2023 Assin-North Byelection, that they stood the unnecessary risk of regressing the rapid and salutary development of the Assin-North Constituency, in the Central Region, if they voted to return the recently expelled National Democratic Congress-sponsored Parliamentarian for the area, Mr. James Gyakye Quayson, who is presently facing several criminal charges, including perjury and deliberate public deceit, regarding his failure to renounce his naturalized Canadian citizenship, as required by the largely National Democratic Congress-authored 1992 Republican Constitution of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to our august National Assembly (See “Gyakye Quayson Not Guilty Until Proven So by a Court – Franklin Cudjoe Schools Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 6/26/23).

It was, of course, the afore-referenced news article that drew the immediate attention of this writer, if also because the President’s statement is fundamentally no different from what the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) told a crowd of stalwart supporters and sympathizers of the latter party, scarcely 24 hours before Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made the statement that is widely attributed to him in the same Assin-North Constituency. Actually, what Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama, the twice-defeated, one-term former President said was even far more egregious than IMANI-Africa’s President, Franklin Cudjoe, a diehard supporter of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress, would have members of the Global Ghanaian Community (GGC) believe.

For his part, Mr. Mahama maliciously told his Assin-North party supporters that it was the leadership of the New patriotic Party, rather than a lawsuit filed by a private individual bona fide Ghanaian citizen from the Assin-North Constituency morally offended by Mr. Gyakye Quayson’s criminal violation of the law, that caused the indictment of the longtime Canadian voluntary exile and Mr. Gyakye Quayson’s summary expulsion from our august National Assembly or Parliament. It is also significant to highlight the conspicuous failure of IMANI-Africa’s Mr. Cudjoe to promptly step into the fray by reminding his favorite political racehorse that, in fact, while the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party may naturally have welcomed the suit, the incontrovertible fact still stood that Mr. Gyakye Quayson’s criminal indictment was not sponsored by the institutional establishment of the New Patriotic Party per se.

The preceding, however, does not preclude the possibility of some well-heeled party stalwarts’ having reached out to financially support the plaintiff, just as some National Democratic Congress’ stalwarts had done in the case of the late Mr. Adamu Dramane Sakande, a New Patriotic Party-sponsored Member of Parliament from the Bawku-Central Constituency, in the Upper-East Region. It is also rather absurd to hear the former Mahama Presidential Staffer and hanger-on, Dr. Clement Abas Apaak, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Builsa-South, in the Upper-East Region, rudely and luridly demand that the President be cited for contempt of court, primarily because one of the foremost and finest trial lawyers of his generation has dared to call a spade a spade, by wisely and logically inferring the most obvious, which is the near-certain possibility of the fact that the criminally indicted Mr. Gyakye Quayson stands a great chance of being decisively slapped with a considerable prison sentence than not.

Dr. Apaak’s demand is downright farcical because when it comes to an appreciation of the intricate dynamics of Ghana’s jurisprudence, both Messrs. Apaak and his political benefactor and financial patron have absolutely zilch edge over the proverbial “Little Man from Kyebi” (See “The Court Must Cite Akufo-Addo for Contempt Over His ‘Gyakye Quayson Will Go to Prison’ Comment – Clement Apaak” Modernghana.com 6/26/23). Maybe somebody more sober and psychologically balanced needs to remind Messrs. Apaak and Mahama of the fact that these two kleptocratic political bullies do not stand over and above the sacred laws of our land, anymore than the man who immediately succeeded the Bole-Bamboi native at Jubilee House and also permanently changed the local identity of his Savannah Region native.

Now, to IMANI-Africa’s Franklin Cudjoe’s assertion that: “Gyakye Quayson is not guilty of current charges until proven otherwise by a competent and credible court,” our pointedly terse response is that Mr. Gyakye Quayson already stands indicted by a competent and a credible court of judicature, primarily based on the forensically indisputable strength of the evidence presented before it and has already been expelled from Parliament by a competent and a credible panel of Apex Court Jurists. Now, it takes only a clinically retarded nitpicking idiot not to recognize the most obvious, however theoretically prejudicial such obvious but well-informed conclusion may be deemed.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 26, 2023
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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