Akwadum Republic President’s CJ Removal Attempt Politically Suicidal

If the Mahama Posse presently occupying Jubilee House and the former Kwame Nkrumah Conference Center, shamelessly cannibalized by the Rawlings Posse into Ghana’s Fourth Republican Parliament or National Assembly Hall and Building - now, let’s talk about the real builders of our nation - is entertaining any possibility of returning the country to the sort of “Constitutional Dictatorship” that precipitated Ghana’s maiden military putsch on February 24, 1966, they had better think thrice before inadvisably proceeding with such heinous and politically insufferable assay at Fourth-Republican autocracy. It will not wash.

To be certain, any such attempt to reduce the country to the sort of spearchucking lunacy that seems to have eternally and permanently become the prime political diet of the Mamprusi and the Frafra Tribal Bands, among others, in the so-called Five Northern Regions, could very well see our beloved nation split into at least two or three polities. Ghanaians are not ready to play this unspeakably foolish and patently bestial game of internecine and mutual self-destruction. We have come too far as a people to have ourselves heinously lapse or regress into the sort of civic savagery that most of our most prominent and influential leaders, both traditional and postcolonial, appear to have conveniently turned a blind eye to, perhaps puerilely hoping that this most scurrilous culture of Darwinian State of Nature will, somehow, dissipate into the proverbial thin air all by itself.

Of course, such scandalous expectation occurs only in the Paradise of Arrant and Congenital Fools. Truth be told unreservedly; which is that the real endgame of the circus-like attempt to remove Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo from Presiding Over the Highest Court and Bench of our beloved Democratic Republic of Akwadum, conspicuously and peevishly far transcends the purely personal. It is indisputably and inescapably institutional, and the scofflaw leadership of the presently ruling National Democratic Congress has a long and an unenviable track record that goes back to at least some 42 or 43 years, depending on how any studious observer of the nation-wrecking political culture and ethos of the state-capturing leadership and the morally unconscionable apparatchiks of Death Incorporated, known variously throughout the aforementioned period under discursive purview as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and, presently, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) reckons the same.

Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo has only accidentally become a lightning rod being expediently and conveniently used by the President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama and the “Lt-Col.” Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia -commandeered National Democratic Congress to effectively abrogate and liquidate the statutory independence of Ghana’s Judicial System and Establishment. In the recent past, the human target for the complete and the thorough as well as the total destruction of Ghana’s Judicial System and Establishment have been Chiefs Justice Emeriti Georgina Theodora Wood and Kwasi Anin-Yeboah.

Which is precisely why it comes as absolutely no surprise that Ms. Diana Asonaba Dapaah, the former Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice, would so vehemently impugn the very basis upon which the so-called prima-facie case against Mrs. Gertrude Sackey-Torkornoo was purportedly established in a clearly politically motivated bid to having the third female Chief Justice in the judicial history of postcolonial Ghana summarily dismissed, so as to make way for a Mahama- and a National Democratic Congress-beholden President of the Apex Court of Akwadum (See “CJ Removal: No Basis for Establishing Prima Facie Case - Diana Dapaah” Modernghana.com 4/27/25).

The very lightning speed and rush with which Associate Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie was selected by President Mahama to pinch-hit for the “Suspended” Chief Justice Gertrude Sackey-Torkornoo came as absolutely no surprise to any avid observer of the historical relationship between the leadership of the National Democratic Congress and the country’s Judicial Establishment, in particular between the late President John Evans Atta-Mills and President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, on the one hand, and Chiefs Justice Emeriti Georgina Theodora Wood and Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, on the other.

Shortly before the long-anticipated scandalous announcement by President Mahama of his intention to cause the removal of Chief Justice Gertrude Sackey-Torkornoo, Yours Truly predicted right on the pages of this very column that Ghana - aka, The Democratic Republic of Akwadum - was irreversibly and inevitably headed towards a Constitutional Crisis, unless sanity was promptly made to prevail at the Gonja Mafia-cannibalized Jubilee House. And true to prediction, all the proverbial pieces of the puzzle appear to be falling smack into place.

According to former Deputy Attorney-General Diana Asonaba Dapaah, nearly each and every one of the three professional misconduct petitions brought against the Chief Justice contains “assertions without evidence and misinterpretations of constitutional procedures,” especially vis-a-vis the petition allegedly submitted by the Xavier Group.

If the preceding expert observations turn out to be valid, the very Presidency of Mr. Mahama could very well be in deep trouble. Those detractors of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo who jumped the gun by prematurely calling for the immediate resignation of this prime target of the flagrant abuse of his executive powers, must also be prepared to promptly call for the immediate resignation of the man who euphorically claimed that the “Mysterious Vanishing” of his then boss and prime benefactor had been opportunely engineered by Divine Providence, had also be better prepared to call for the immediate resignation of President Mahama. As our ancient Akan sages are fabled to have been fond of saying: “It is the very same rod used for disciplining Kwaku Baah that is also used for the same purpose on Kwame Takyi.” Any teachable lessons here, people? We definitely hope so!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
April 28, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]