Why Prof Karikari Is Royally Wrong

Absolutely no rational believer in our kind of Civilized Constitutional Democracy would quibble over the imperative need for politically disgruntled citizens of all shades and stripes of ideological suasions to publicly protest and/or organize protest demonstrations as a legitimate means of expressing dissent with government policies of which they vehemently disagree. About the only exception here, however, is the fact that not all public spaces, primarily for security reasons, are subject to being freely or indiscriminately open to the kind of protest demonstrations that were held by mainly political opposition-sponsored groups around the quite legitimate theme of #OccupyJulorBiiHouse on September 21, 2023, which also happened to be the 114^th Birthday Anniversary of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first postcolonial leader and a statutory holiday.

Anyway, for those of our readers who may not be familiar with the Ga-language, largely spoken in Ghana’s capital of Accra, “Julorbii” means “Children of Thieves,” an obviously creative pun on Jubilee House or Ghana’s Presidential Palace, that is, the nation’s official seat of governance, as a den of kleptocrats, where the demonstrators had scheduled the route of their protest demonstrations, against the advice of the leadership of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), we are told. Now, there have been several conflicting reports over the fact of whether, indeed, any of the demonstrators and the bevy of media operatives that covered the event had been maltreated or “manhandled,” as widely reported and allegedly claimed by Professor Kwame Karikari, the Founder and Retired Executive-Director of the regionally renowned Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), a civil-society establishment aimed at monitoring general media reportage and promoting qualitative media standards and output.

Now, if I also remember correctly, Professor Karikari was once the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), the state-owned and operated electronic media establishment. As well, Professor Karikari has also served as Dean of the School of Mass Communications at the nation’s flagship tertiary academy, to wit, the University of Ghana, Legon. Like this writer, the protagonist of this column is also a distinguished alumnus of the City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY). Yes, there have been conflicting reports over the fact of whether, indeed, some journalists, including a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reporter or correspondent, had been physically mistreated by some of the police officers assigned to ensure that the aforesaid protest demonstrations were conducted in an orderly fashion or manner.

As of this writing, a little over two weeks later, however, the Minister of Information had issued a public statement vehemently denying that the aforesaid BBC reporter or correspondent or any other journalist, foreign or local, for that matter, had been either rudely or unprofessionally treated by detailed law-enforcement agents. Now, the mere vehement and public denial that absolutely no media operatives or personnel had been mistreated by some police officers assigned to ensure the prevalence of law and order during the aforementioned demonstrations by the Information Minister, namely, Mr. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, does not automatically or necessarily negate or invalidate the claims made by those members of the media corps who covered the events, who, by the way, are insistent on their assertion of having been mistreated by police personnel on the ground, as it were. There are, of course, legitimate avenues, ultimately, for the aggrieved journalists to seek redress.

Still, it bears underscoring the fact that having a remarkable police presence at the #OccupyJulorBiiHouse protest demonstrations was relatively far more significant than quite the opposite situation, which could very well have resulted in chaos and complete public disorder. For there are also reports indicating that some of the largely main opposition National Democratic Congress-sponsored rabble-rousers had attempted to predictably and characteristically breach established protocol for the protest march. What is most important to underscore here is that under the present Akufo-Addo Administration, the personnel and the institutional establishment of the Ghana Police Service have become far more civically and socially progressive and professionally proactive than they had been under the previous John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama-led ragtag regime of the National Democratic Congress, during which period the twice-defeated, one-term President Mahama had categorically noted that he had absolutely no use for and confidence in both the institutional establishment and the personnel of the Ghana Police Service.

Instead, as almost each and every one of you, Our Dear Readers, may be already well aware, the previous Mahama regime deliberately underfunded and underequipped the Ghana Police Service. Rather, the then President John “Ford Expedition Payola” Dramani Mahama preferred to use such mercenary privateers as the Anas Aremeyaw Anas-owned and operated Tiger-Eye Private Investigators Limited Liability Company, into which millions of cedis of Ghanaian taxpayers’ money was blindly and recklessly sunk, while the institutional establishment of the Ghana Police Service precipitously lost its pride of place and the once regionally renowned and celebrated Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service was effectively reduced to a sideshow of the Anas Company of Media Entrappers and a beehive of hopeless sleuthing amateurs. To-date, Candidate-General John “Gnassingbe” Dramani Mahama has yet to account for the humongous amounts of money that he criminally diverted from our National Treasury that ought to have been allocated to the Ghana Police Service but, instead, ended as judge-baiting traps and, ultimately, in the wallets and the bank accounts of the members of the Tiger-Eye Gang and the latter’s prime benefactor.

Which is why one cannot feel nauseated enough to hear such robber-baron and kleptocratic front-row NDC operatives like Messrs. Adongo, Forson and Ablakwa grandstand over what these veritable political scam-artists imperiously claim to be the complete and abject lack of transparency and accountability among the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party. Ultimately, our well-calibrated contention here is that whatever professional infelicities Professor Karikari may legitimately envisage to detract from the professional conduct of the personnel of the Ghana Police Service must be fairly balanced by the historically unprecedented achievements of both the institutional establishment of the Ghana Police Service and our radically remodeled and enviably retrained police personnel as well. Ours, of course, is not a perfect constitutional democracy. But then whoever said there was ever any perfect constitutionally democratic culture anywhere around the globe?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
October 9, 2023
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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