What “Reprisals” Is Kissi Agyebeng Talking About?

He unarguably vindicates critics of his wishy-washy job performance, like Martin ABK Amidu, his immediate predecessor, when William Kissi Agyebeng, the Akufo-Addo-appointed Independent Special Prosecutor, so publicly and vehemently inveighs against the seismic groundswell of public calls and demands for the assets declaration profile of all ministerial and executive appointees of the Mahama 2.0 regime to be promptly published and made readily accessible to each and every Ghanaian citizen who so desires the same via the promulgation or the diktat of the Freedom-of-Information Act (See “I disagree with calls for publication of assets declared by officials — Special Prosecutor” Modernghana.com 6/6/25).

Indeed, not only does the Okwawu-Nkwatia native and graduate of the Accra Academy Senior High School and the University of Ghana Law School morally and administratively vindicate his most ardent and inveterate critic, Mr. Kissi Agyebeng even more disturbingly proves himself to be palpably not up to snuff with his job, as it were, when it comes to engaging in the politically progressive battle to drastically reduce the exponential level of rank official corruption in the country.

If, indeed, the process outlined in Article 286 of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution for Public Office Holders (Declaration of Assets and Disqualifications Act of 1998) categorically requires public officials to declare their assets, incomes and liabilities upon assuming office, every four years, and at the end of the individual and the respective tenures of our public officials and executive appointees, then it is inexcusable for Mr. Kissi Agyebeng to so cavalierly and scandalously suppose that it is only statutorily empowered or mandated appointees like himself who have an especial and exclusive right to access and scrutinize the assets and the privately acquired wealth of citizens of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana who voluntarily offer themselves and their services for the welfare of their fellow citizens and the collective development of the country.

And if such assets and, one also presumes, liabilities were honestly and genuinely acquired and/or contracted by lawful means, then, of course, there is absolutely no reason for public officials like the Akufo-Addo-appointed Special Prosecutor to be anxious or afraid of the possibility of any “reprisals” from any quarter whatsoever. At any rate, it is not even clear precisely what he means when the Cornell University, New York, Law School Graduate talks about “reprisals,” unless the subject of this rejoinder or news-feature column has something morally and/or legally damning to hide from the rest of us bona fide members of the Global Ghanaian Community (GGC).

In the recent past, this writer has not waited for the wink or the batting of an eye to literally go to bat for Mr. Kissi Agyebeng, when this otherwise quite intelligent and seemingly forward-looking young man got needlessly heckled by, in particular, his immediate predecessor, even when it was evidently and disturbingly clear to Yours Truly that, in terms of the rectitude or the moral compass of his professional conduct, Mr. Kissi Agyebeng was absolutely of no significant cut or a remarkable improvement on the unspeakable shock and anger that greeted the performance of Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, incontestably the most grossly incompetent Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to have ever held the latter portfolio over the last 40 years, perhaps only surpassed or superseded in the breach by Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, of Alfred Agbesi Woyome Mega-Heist Infamy.

Thankfully, though, it absolutely goes without saying that ultimately, Mr. Kissi Agyebeng is definitely entitled to his own opinion and nobody else’s opinion, his highly privileged official rank and status notwithstanding. After all, did not all of us watch intensely with breathtaking and indescribable conniption as Mr. Kissi Agyebeng, like his immediate predecessor, deliberately and luridly bungled the evidentiary foolproof case of the now-Revenant President John Dramani Mahama and the European Airbus SE Payola Affair, coming to his desk right on the heels of the Cecilia Abena Dapaah (Kufuor) Affair?

Which is also why sometimes one cannot help but unreservedly wonder and agree with Mr. Kissi Agyebeng’s self-proclaimed archnemesis, namely, Mr. Amidu, that it may be well past time for his immediate successor to relinquish the destiny-shaping bully pulpit which our protagonist well appears to have grossly underused to absolutely no emulative or laudable effect. It is also very obvious that our Independent Special Prosecutor has irretrievably and irrecoverably lost every ounce of the kind of professional credibility that greeted him at the beginning of his appointment to his present job.

In short, Mr. Kissi Agyebeng would be better off having his present boondoggle of a job redesignated as the “Politically Dependent Windvane of a Capriciously Selective Prosecutor” (PDWCSP). We have also been eye- and ear-witnesses to the unarguably scandalous and irredeemably capricious manner in which Mr. Kissi Agyebeng has been handling alleged cases of official corruption involving operatives of the country’s two major political parties, namely, the presently ruling Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the recently democratically ousted Akufo-Addo and the Mahamudu Bawumia-led government of the New Patriotic Party. It is incontrovertibly an incurable eyesore. Time for Mr. Kissi Agyebeng to go back to his former daytime job by respectably hanging up his hat, as it were.

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