Dare You Condemn the Truthteller, GBA?!

It is rather ironic for the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) to roundly condemn the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for promptly and aptly calling his immediate predecessor to the carpet, as it were, for criminally defrauding and robbing hardworking Ghanaian citizens and taxpayers to the tune of millions of American Dollars in the form of at least €5 million (Five-Million Euros) bribery solicitation from the manufacturers of the European Airbus Company, a heinous criminal racket, exclusively hatched on behalf of the then Vice-President John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama, the lead bribe-solicitor himself, and his relatives and friends that has been guesstimated to have cost Ghanaians the ginormous sum of between $200-$500 million (USD) in the form of noncompetitive bidding – (See “We Condemn Akufo-Addo’s Linking of Mahama to Airbus Scandal at Our Conference – GBA” Modernghana.com 9/11/23).

Rather ironic on two levels, being that the Akufo-Addo carp or well-deserved criticism of the President’s immediate predecessor came right on the heels of the Third-Annual Conference of a National Democratic Congress-sponsored exclusive association of professionally trained lawyers who are also card-carrying members of Ghana’s main opposition political party. Now, the second level of irony here is the fact that if any Ghanaian leader or president could be aptly described as being guilty of politicizing and weaponizing the legal and the judicial establishment of the country, it is none other than the twice-defeated former President who continues to blame retired Chief Justice Kwesi Anin-Yeboah and the members of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) for his landslide loss of the 2020 Presidential Election, instead of his own criminal and murderous addiction to bribery solicitation, and corruption as, which has cost the country billions of dollars and cedis over the course of some 8 years already, and further threatens to cost the nation even more, in the highly unlikely event of Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama Mahama’s being returned to Jubilee House or the Presidency for another 4 years, which would add up to a humongous 12 years of the virtual enslavement of the Ghanaian taxpayer, a heinous act of Class-A Felony which an already debt-overburdened Ghanaian citizenry can ill afford.

This is clearly what the executive operatives of the Ghana Bar Association egregiously and flagrantly missed, either wittingly or unwittingly, from the Gospel Truth that was Nana Akufo-Addo’s charitably measured response to the previous week’s diatribe leveled against the legendary “Leprechaun of Akyem-Abomosu” by the Bole-Bamboi native from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region. In his aforementioned address to the members of the Third-Annual National Democratic Congress’ card-carrying lawyers, the pathologically and compulsively kleptocratic Mr. Mahama called Nana Akufo-Addo a “clearing agent” who was in the unsavory habit of condoning official corruption vis-à-vis nearly each and every one of his cabinet and executive appointees brought up on credible charges of corruption, conveniently ignoring to equally inform the legally trained and licensed card-carrying NDC conferees in Akosombo, the very heart of Nana Akufo-Addo’s electoral stronghold and familial moorings, that under the previous ragtag Mahama regime, about half of all cabinet appointees of the globally infamous Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Gravy-Train Conductor had been criminally and deliberately placed on monthly double salaries by the then President Mahama.

Which clearly and obviously makes the man described by the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress, as the most thoroughgoing corrupt Ghanaian leader in our beloved nation’s postcolonial history a mega-thief without any coequal in the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. Now, if this unimpeachably authoritative characterization of Mr. Mahama has any iota of validity, and there is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise, then it well appears that the former Rawlings’ protégé and Communications Minister is dead-on-target when he asserts that his immediate successor is a “clearing agent” for official corruption which, logically, also implies that Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama is also a “stealing agent” par-excellence, since as the age-old adage goes: “It Takes One to Know One.” Now, isn’t it also often said that: “It is the master-thief who knows the real owner of the stolen goods”?

There is also something inescapably amusing about the fact that the executive operatives of the Ghana Bar Association would invite Nana Akufo-Addo, a bona fide longstanding member of the nation’s oldest and most credible association of professionally trained and licensed practicing lawyers, and a former President of the Greater-Accra Bar Regional Association (GABA), in his capacity as the incumbent President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, to one of their well-attended annual conferences and curiously expect that, somehow, the “Little Man from Kyebi” would appear on the podium fully robed in a papal habit, complete with a miter, and start quoting from the Beatitudes, as Mr. Saviour Kudze, described by the media as the Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Bar Association, is widely reported to have told the host of an Accra-based radio station’s current affairs program.

Which is also why I would not be the least bit flabbergasted if it also turns out that Mr. Kudze had attended and actively participated in the previous week’s NDC-sponsored, party card-carrying Association of National Democratic Congress’ Lawyers in Akosombo to criminally strategize on how to politicize and weaponize our nation’s legal a judicial system in support of another highly unlikely Mahama Presidency. We are in deep trouble, countrymen and women.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
September 11, 2023
E-mail: [email protected]