Daniel Mensah Must Be Forced to Stand Down as High Court Judge

It came to yours truly as a complete surprise to learn that, indeed, the Honorable Mister Justice Daniel Mensah, better known officially as the Paramount Chief of the Dormaa Ahenkro Traditional Area, in the present Akufo-Addo-created Bono Region, was also a legally and a legitimately sworn Justice of Ghana’s High Court System. A complete surprise to me because ever since his existence and his very prominent status came to my attention as a self-willed or an avowed thorn in the side of His Majesty, The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, I have always recognized the Dormaahene as a brazen and a publicly self-proclaimed agitprop goon for the country’s main opposition political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) – (See “Dormaahene Must Resign or Be Sacked from the High Court – Former GBA President Sam Okudzeto” Ghanaweb.com 7/4/23).

And that awareness of Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Agyeman-Badu, II’s openly hostile and passionately partisan and profuse pro-Mahama and pro-National Democratic Congress’ effusions was quite a while back. For example, the Dormaahene is well known to have himself quite infamous and unpopular with a sizeable portion of his subjects, as it were, for being at loggerheads and, even palpably, at cross-purposes with the Queenmother of the Dormaa Paramountcy. I learned of this not very long after the appointment of Mr. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Minister of Health, by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and in particular regarding the construction of a modern sports complex and other taxpayer-funded community and national development facilities in the aforementioned traditional area.

On a U-tube videotape of considerable length that this writer chanced across not very long ago, Nana Agyeman-Badu, II, is seen virulently castigating the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), as well as the former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party for having supposedly done absolutely nothing of worth or significance in the one-million-plus populated Dormaa Ahenkro Municipality; and that nearly every one of the most significant community-development projects that existed in the Dormaa Ahenkro Traditional Area had been undertaken by the leadership of the present main opposition National Democratic Congress. It was also from the aforesaid quite considerably long videotape, to be certain, that this author learned from the Paramount Queenmother of the Dormaa Ahenkro Traditional Area, Odeneho Akosua Fima Dwabeng Ababio, II, that Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu was, in fact, an uncle to both Osagyefo Agyeman-Badu, II and Odeneho Akosua Fima Dwabeng Ababio, II, if memory serves yours truly accurately.

You see, I get goose-bumped anytime that I have had cause or the occasion to write about the increasingly insufferably offensive verbal effusions of and culturally, morally and politically indecorous behavior Justice Daniel Mensah, as the Dormaahene is also known and recognized by the country’s judicial establishment. Very much so because by his own publicly captured testimony, Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Agyeman-Badu may very well be a bona fide kinsman of yours truly, and originally from the Nsawam-Adoagyiri and Akyem-Nkronso Royal Family. But what has oddly fascinated this writer about the jejune public tantrums of the Dormaahene is Nana Agyeman-Badu’s apparently deliberate and conveniently cultivated blindness to the fact that but for the landmark and the historically unprecedented implementation of the Fee-Free Senior High School System by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for only one example, there would be hundreds of woefully neglected youths trawling the streets and alleyways of Dormaa and its environs and deeply involved in many criminal and antisocial activities, including drug use and sale, commercial sex, armed robbery, murder, unprovoked assault and shoplifting.

Vehement protestations to the contrary by impudent National Democratic Congress’ goons like Mr. Samuel “Sammy” Gyamfi notwithstanding, Nana Agyeman-Badu, II, has gone on record and categorically stated that as far as he is concerned, former President John “SADA-Akonfem Kanazoe Payola Ouagadougou” Dramani Mahama is the only Fourth-Republican Leader who has undertaken any worthwhile quality-of-life improvements in the Dormaa Ahenkro Traditional Area. It is quite conceivable that Nana Agyeman-Badu, II, feels heavily indebted to both former President Mahama and the entire leadership of the National Democratic Congress because the latter may very well have willfully or deliberately violated Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution, which expressly enjoins the Separation of Church or Religion and the State, by permitting the legally trained Dormaahene to sit on the bench as a High Court Judge.

Under the 1992 Republican Constitution, the institutional establishment of Chieftaincy falls into the category of the Church and Religion, and the Ministry of Chieftaincy, Religion and Culture, I suppose, and not the political establishment of the State or any of the Three Arms of Modern Democratic Governance, namely, The Executive, The Judiciary and The Legislature. Which means that even if he had not flagrantly and egregiously violated the constitutionally stipulated Separation of Powers or the Separation of Church and State, in American contextual parlance, by unduly and intemperately interfering in the James Gyakye Quayson’s dual nationality act of criminal violation vis-à-vis the Assin-North Constituency’s 2020 Parliamentary Election, Nana Agyeman-Badu, II, would still be in egregious and, perhaps, even flagrant violation of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution (See “Lawyer Sam Okudzeto Criticizes Dormaahene’s Meddling, Calls for Judicial Council Sanction” Ghanaweb.com 7/3/23).

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
July 8, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]