Did Edward Ennin Ever Get to Testify before the ORAL Committee?

I have been meaning to promptly ask whether the Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa-chaired defunct Operation Recover All Loot(s) (ORAL) “Fortune Hunting” Committee established by President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama ever offered the prime opportunity to Mr. Edward Ennin, the former New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Obuasi-East Constituency, in the Asante Region, to testify before it and assist it in locating the allegedly humongous stashes of the stolen wealth of Ghanaian taxpayers by some key operatives of the Akufo-Addo Government that occupied Jubilee House from January 2017 through January 7, 2025 (See “I Am Prepared to Give Evidence of Where the Looted State Funds Are Hidden - Former NPP MP” Ghanaweb.com 12/18/24).

In general, there is absolutely nothing refreshingly new or uniquely revelatory or epiphanic about the allegation made by the former New Patriotic Party-sponsored Obuasi-East legislator. But what Ghanaian citizens and residents ought to be even more avidly interested in regards the circumstances under which Mr. Ennin lost his parliamentary seat, and then why the plaintiff had to wait this unduly long to tell Ghanaians an “Urban Tale” that most of us are already more than intimately familiar with, and also one that is definitely and absolutely not peculiar to the leadership of any one of our two major political parties.

In other words, if the plaintiff’s motive for making his aforesaid allegation of grand larceny against some key operatives of the recently exited Akufo-Addo government extends far beyond the primarily patriotic to one entailing retributive grievance, then, of course, the latter pretext or context of Mr. Ennin’s motive ought to be envisaged for what it really and truly is, which is retributive justice or sheer and raw vengeance and absolutely nothing more or less. Which, by the way, is absolutely in no way to either imply or suggest that the plaintiff’s seemingly avid desire to facilitate the retrieval of pilfered taxpayer money must be unreservedly applauded rather than cynically and offhandedly dismissed or roundly condemned as the veritable product of the proverbial sour grapes.

I mean, Ghanaians have already learned some bitter and sober lessons from the Cecilia Dapaah Bedroom Cash-Stashing Episode or Saga, in particular the unforgivably scandalous attempt by the former President to preemptively nullify the inalienable right of each and every Ghanaian citizen to have his or her oath-sworn leaders who wilfully fall foul of the sacred laws of the land to be promptly and rigorously brought to book and disciplinary account or recompense, in classical and poetical Shakespearean parlance.

We are reliably informed that in an interview that Mr. Ennin granted the Accra-based UTV network not very long ago, the plaintiff had wildly alleged the prevalence of “gross looting of the resources of the State” under the wilfully criminal supervision of then President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. For this author, personally, though, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this story is the plaintiff’s solemn avowal that he is prepared to personally identify to the ORAL Committee members some of Nana Akufo-Addo’s diplomatic appointees, in the main an unspecified number of “ambassadors and high commissioners who know where the stolen monies of the State have been shipped to,” including, of all places, the South American country of Guyana, where the plaintiff also reportedly claims some key players of the previous Akufo-Addo regime have invested some of the stolen wealth of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana in that country’s crude oil industry.

Of course, what we are being told by default or glaringly obvious and convenient omission is the fact that the aforesaid former Akufo-Addo appointees did not invent the proverbial wheel of official corruption in our Fourth-Republican dispensation, but that there very likely existed a money-laundering avenue or scheme created by previous Fourth-Republican governments, including the National Democratic Congress-sponsored regimes of the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings and the late President John Evans “Atta-Woyome” Mills, as an ardent critic of the latter once called him, as well as, of course, the previous pre-Akufo-Addo, Mahama-led ragtag and thoroughgoing corrupt regime of the National Democratic Congress, at least as publicly and authoritatively declared by the universally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress, to wit, Chairman Avaklasu Rawlings, of our very painful memory banks and cells, as it were.

If, indeed, it is true that Mr. Ennin had been privy to treasonable or treasonous conversations that involved high level diplomatic appointees of former President Akufo-Addo, entailing the criminal shipping of stolen Ghanaian taxpayer money which the plaintiff deemed to be “dangerous” and civically and/or politically untenable, why has Mr. Ennin waited this unduly long to bring this most unpatriotic act of nation-wrecking act of heinous criminality to the light of condign leadership accountability? You see, I have often said that instead of being over-reliant on the “extortionate generosity” of the traditional gut-cramming Bretton-Woods establishments of The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ghanaian governments ought to begin conducting serious probes and enquiries among its own leadership ranks, with the all too godly objective of retrieving the billions of dollars of our stolen wealth for the development of the country.

The World Bank and the IMF could then more appropriately become supplementary sources of fiscal assistance rather than our primary sources of national development and managerial wherewithal. It is time to completely and respectably liberate ourselves from slavocratic strings of “Aryano-Western” imperialism.

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