Akuffo-Dampare Is an Unimpeachable Institutional Neo-Pioneer in His Own Right

One would have expected that Mr. Samuel Atta-Akyea, the Akufo-Addo-fired former Minister for Works, Housing and Water Resources, would rather heartily commend the recently retired Akufo-Addo-appointed Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), instead of so jejunely, scandalously and childishly celebrating what the Akufo-Addo kinsman and legal surrogate and former hand-me-down New Patriotic Party-sponsored Member of Parliament for Abuakwa-South Constituency, in the Eastern Region, cynically terms as the well-deserved dismissal of Dr. George Akuffo-Dampare by the twice, nonconsecutively elected President John “Ahmed Bola Tinubu of Ghana” Dramani Mahama from the highly sensitive and volatile public office which Dr. Dampare held so admirably and inimitably, against what may be aptly termed as “Sisyphean Odds” for approximately four years, one of the longest tenures for this position (See “ ‘You Will[sic] Be Shocked!’ - Atta Akyea on Alleged Dossier on Dampare Presented to Akufo-Addo” Ghanaweb.com 3/15/25).

Maybe instead of vacuously and self-righteously and triumphantly telling Ghanaians that IGP Dampare is/was a Janus-faced Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - my profound apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, My Dear Kid Uncle Atta-Akyea would be far better off informing his fellow Ghanaian countrymen and women, precisely why when he arrived at the Shiashie, East-Legon private residence of the grisly murdered Mr. Joseph Boakye-Danquah Adu, his own maternal cousin and fellow NPP Parliamentarian from the Abuakwa-North Constituency, also in the Eastern Region, the younger half-brother of my Akropong-SALEM classmate - Mr. Thomas Akyea - is widely alleged by the media to have literally and curiously jubilated over this horrific incident by rather bizarrely claiming that the violent and the unspeakably barbaric murder of My Dear and Beloved Uncle Boakye-Danquah Adu, a grandson of the legendary, immortalized and the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics, was a godsend and a good-luck charm or mascot for the vaulting presidential ambition of the then politically desperate Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

The man who chaired the parliamentary panel or committee charged with investigating the devious attempt by the Akufo-Addo Administration or Presidency to summarily remove Dr. Dampare from office, would likely sober up if the retired IGP were also to “disclose” the contents of the docket or dossier that the latter personally has vis-a-vis the highly suspicious murder of Mr. Boakye-Danquah Adu on the likes of Mr. Atta-Akyea and the much-maligned Kyebi and the Akyem-Abomosu Mafia and the Gonja and the Sogakope Mafia, as well, to be certain. You see, Yours Truly is not even here thinking about that common and old wise saying that: “Those who live in bamboo hovels must be extremely careful not to play with paraffin oil or kerosene.”

The incontrovertible fact of the matter is that Dr. George Akuffo-Dampare has far and away distinguished himself in a multiplicity of ways that cannot be equally favorably said of My Dear And Insufferably Presumptuous Uncle Atta-Akyea, that is, besides his unimpeachable flooring of then Attorney-General Martin ABK Amidu, in the globally infamous case of the horrific and the morally irredeemably barbaric decapitation of the traditional Supreme Overlord of the Ancient Kingdom of Dagbon and more than 40 of his courtiers. But for the timely and the professionally indisputable intervention of IGP Akuffo-Dampare, the entire institutional establishment of the Ghana Police Service would have literally gone down to the proverbial dogs or the tubes, as Americans are wont to say. Today, we have the new state-of-the-art Police Residential Quarters in the Dome suburb of Accra because of the exemplary leadership of Dr. Dampare that rekindled the hitherto total sidelining of the institutional establishment of the Ghana Police Service under the previous Mahama regime.

As we all vividly recall, under the previous Judge-Baiting and Framing Mahama regime, it was the Anas Aremeyaw Anas-owned Tiger-Eye Private Investigations Company that virtually and almost effectively came to represent the institutional establishment of the Ghana Police Service. To-date, President Mahama has yet to account to the Ghanaian citizenry and the nation, by logical extension, precisely how much of the public dough or moolah, as my two teenage boys are wont to say, had been doled out to the Anas Aremeyaw Anas Gang to expressly destroy the image, reputation and the credibility of our judges and magistrates and, in effect, the country’s judicial establishment as a whole, by the previous Mahama regime.

If, today, there exists any national security agency or institutional establishment called the Ghana Police Service, it goes without saying that we unreservedly have a bona fide and an “Honorable Akyemkwaa” by the name of Dr. George Akuffo-Dampare to resoundingly thank for our good fortune and not merely because a widely alleged ethnocentric and pathologically nepotistic Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had done a professionally overqualified Commissioner of Police (COP) Akuffo-Dampare any extraordinary favor by appointing the latter, an erudite and expert forensic scientist, to the Apex Portfolio of Inspector-General or Chief Constable of the Ghana Police Service. Trust me, an intellectually fecund and profusely talented, eloquent and astute Dr. Akufo-Dampare would have grabbed far more lucrative and more professionally rewarding opportunities both inside and outside our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.

The bad news for Critic Atta-Akyea and a major blemish to both his credibility and professional competence is that, as Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, the protagonist of this rejoinder presided over the criminal extortion of at least $100 million (USD) of Ghanaian taxpayer money, because for more than a year after he assumed the leadership of the latter portfolio, My Dear Kid Uncle sat duck over this criminal creaming of Ghanaian taxpayers by operatives of the previous Mahama regime without demanding an official auditing of the coffers and the ledgers of his ministry. Is this a man who is qualified to call the character and the professional competence of IGP Akuffo-Dampare into question and disfavor?

The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, would also call the parliamentary competence and the leadership efficiency and vision of the former Abuakwa-South MP into serious question. But, of course, what is even more galling is the very cavalier presumption that, somehow, since Dr. Dampare had been appointed to the post of Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service by the “President of Our Republic,” somehow, it was bounden upon the appointee to be blindly loyal to the person or the presidency of the appointing executive. No such trend of thinking could be more corrupt and criminally bankrupt; but, of course, such thinking also reflects the general mindset of the horrid breed of leadership currently at the helm of our national affairs.

You see, gauging by such morally morbid logic, one begins to soberly appreciate why a “loyal” Independent Special Prosecutor Amidu had been so inadvisably expected to have literally rubber-stamped the Ken Ofori-Atta and the Gabriel “Gabby” Asare Otchere-Darko-engineered Agyapa Mineral Investment Heritage Mega-Scam. Which is also why it may be a very morally and professionally fetching idea for Dr. Kwesi Anning, of the Kofi Annan Global Peacekeeping Institute, to seriously consider hiring Dr. George Akuffo-Dampare, The Komfo Anokye of the Ghana Police Service, to work with him in the promotion of peace and security in both Ghana and around the world.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
March 16, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]