Kpebu Speaks Truth To Power: Why Mahama's Free Speech Record Now Trails Akufo-Addo's

Barely eighteen months into his second coming as President, John Dramani Mahama is facing an uncomfortable comparison from one of Ghana's most outspoken legal minds: that his government has arrested more citizens over free speech than the eight-year Akufo-Addo administration it replaced.

The Accusation
Private legal practitioner Martin Kpebu delivered the charge on TV3's Key Points on Saturday, August 8, framing it in blunt, unambiguous terms. In his account, the current administration's record on arrests linked to speech and criticism of public officials has, in under two years, already surpassed what Akufo-Addo's government produced across eight full years in office.

He called it a bad record for Mahama and urged the President to take note before the damage to his standing becomes irreversible.

Kpebu was careful to distinguish his position from an endorsement of insults. He acknowledged that disparaging public officials is not commendable conduct. But his central argument was one of proportion and precedent: a state cannot arrest its way out of criticism, however offensive that criticism may be. He proposed alternatives fines, public censure, or simply tolerating the noise that comes with democratic life as more fitting responses than detention.

The Historical Comparison
Central to Kpebu's argument was a pointed reminder of Mahama's own history as a target of harsh political language. He recalled that during the Akufo-Addo years, Mahama himself was branded part of an "Akyem sakawa mafia" by critics, without facing arrest. He invoked the late President Jerry John Rawlings and other public figures who endured similarly caustic commentary without the state intervening. The implicit question was whether a president who once benefited from that tolerance should now preside over a government less willing to extend it.

This is not the first time Kpebu has made this case. In recent months he has repeatedly warned on air that Ghana's political culture has long accommodated provocative chants and satire aimed at sitting presidents invoking old campus slogans targeting past leaders without those expressions being criminalized. He has argued that treating every offensive remark as a police matter risks emboldening security agencies to overreach, and that such a climate, left unchecked, deepens fear rather than order.

The Numbers Behind the Claim
Kpebu's charge is not made in a vacuum. Reporting earlier this year cited the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) as documenting roughly fourteen arrests linked to false news and offensive speech within the first sixteen months of the Mahama administration nearly double the figure recorded across the entirety of the previous government's eight-year tenure. That disclosure has added political weight to a controversy already sharpened by an irony that critics have not let pass unnoticed: as an opposition figure in 2022, Mahama himself warned that using state power to intimidate dissent amounted to a dangerous blueprint for undermining democracy.

The government has pushed back on the characterization, with a senior ruling party figure dismissing suggestions that the arrests amount to a coordinated crackdown on dissent.

A Broader Pattern of Criticism
Kpebu's intervention lands alongside other voices raising similar alarms. The New Patriotic Party's National Organizer, Henry Nana Boakye, has separately accused the Mahama government of threatening Ghana's democratic values, going so far as to describe Akufo-Addo once cast by critics, including Mahama himself, as autocratic and hostile to free expression as looking comparatively saintly against the current administration's handling of dissent.

That reversal captures the uncomfortable position the ruling National Democratic Congress now finds itself in. Many of its members, Mahama included, built political capital in opposition partly on the promise of restoring space for free expression after what they characterized as an autocratic, vindictive Akufo-Addo government that instilled fear among public servants and silenced dissent within the education sector and beyond.

What Comes Next
Kpebu's warning is less a legal brief than a political one: goodwill, once spent, is difficult to recover. Whether the Mahama government treats this as noise to be weathered or as a genuine signal to recalibrate its posture toward critics and satirists will likely shape how the free speech question is remembered when his term is assessed

For now, the comparison to Akufo-Addo a president whose legacy on civil liberties Mahama himself once excoriated is not one any incumbent would welcome. It is precisely because Kpebu has previously criticized Akufo-Addo just as sharply, including calling him corruption's "mother serpent," that his current critique of Mahama carries a credibility that is harder for the governing party to dismiss as partisan noise.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.
International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP
mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880

References
Citinewsroom, "Mahama gov't has arrested more for free speech than Akufo-Addo – Kpebu," August 2026. https://www.citinewsroom.com/2026/08/mahama-govt-has-arrested-more-for-free-speech-than-akufo-addo-kpebu/

Al Jazeera, "Arrests of critics in Ghana provokes alarm over free speech under Mahama," June 6, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/6/arrests-of-critics-in-ghana-provokes-alarm-over-free-speech-under-mahama

MyNewsGH, "Frequent arrests over comments could deepen fear and tension in Ghana Kpebu," May 25, 2026. https://www.mynewsgh.com/frequent-arrests-over-comments-could-deepen-fear-and-tension-in-ghana-kpebu/

MyNewsGH, "Politicians defend insults in opposition but condemn them in govt – Kpebu," May 25, 2026. https://www.mynewsgh.com/politicians-defend-insults-in-opposition-but-condemn-them-in-govt-kpebu/

AdomOnline, "Akufo-Addo is now a saint, Mahama is becoming a political tyrant - Nana B," August 2026. https://www.adomonline.com/akufo-addo-is-now-a-saint-mahama-is-becoming-a-political-tyrant-nana-b/

GhanaWeb, "What Martin Kpebu said about former president Akufo-Addo," January 18, 2026. https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/politics/What-Martin-Kpebu-said-about-former-president-Akufo-Addo-2017768

Ghanamma.com, "Autocratic Akufo-Addo is opposed to free speech Mahama," November 22, 2023. https://www.ghanamma.com/2023/11/22/autocratic-akufo-addo-is-opposed-to-free-speech-mahama/

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