How Akufo-Addo escaped
One of the key human right activists who were considered major thorns in the flesh of the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council and the Provisional National Defence Council regimes was Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate for the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections.
The 'crime' of the top human rights activist was his avowed opposition to the unrestrained proclivity of the regimes to trample upon the human rights of the citizens of the nation with gross impunity.
A few days after the gruesome murder of the three High court judges and the retired Army Major, Ebo Tawiah, an operative of the PNDC regime and then Secretary of Labour, violently denounced Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on a public platform in Tema.
As if by divine intervention, Nana Akufo-Addo had left the shores of Ghana on a routine visit to London when news broke out that the three judges and the retired Army Major had been abducted and murdered, with their bodies burnt. A rainstorm that night had prevented the complete burning of the bodies.
The hatred of the Rawlings' Provisional National Defence Council for the top human rights activists emanated from his ability to use the law courts to overturn some of the most arbitrary, yet ostensibly legally immune decisions of the AFRC regime.
Three of such cases, one an arbitrary house arrest and the others involving confiscated assets, were before the three murdered judges, Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, then a nursing mother, Fred Poku Sarkodie, and Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong. Nana Akufo-Addo had pushed for the cases to be overturned against the PNDC regime, and largely succeeded.
One of the cases involved the famous Henry Djaba of Tesano whose assets had been frozen by the regime. That case was before Justice Poku Sarkodie.
According to the Report of the National Reconciliation Commission, set up in 2002, a year into J A Kufuor's government and 20 years after the chilling killings, months after he had succeeded in overthrowing the Limann Administration, Flt Lt J J Rawlings "threatened to punish the judges who had freed the so-called AFRC convicts."
In fact, the NRC Report mentioned former President Rawlings as "someone higher up" under whose "express orders or tacit approval" the cold-blooded murder of the judges was executed.
Page 139 (5.7.5.22) of the Report states: "The SIB found Capt Tsikata to be a conspirator in the abduction and cold-blooded murder of the Judges and the retired Army Officer. But, like Amartey Kwei, Capt Tsikata could not by himself have carried out the deed because he was not even a member of the PNDC.
"It needed the authority of someone higher up, and the person was Flt Lt Rawlings who, according to evidence before the Commission, had, months before he succeeded in overthrowing the Limann Administration, threatened to punish the Judges who had freed the so-called AFRC convicts. Without his express orders, or tacit approval, the operational pass would not have been issued to Amedeka and the gang."
Following the public denouncement by Ebo Tawiah, which gave strong indications of the evil intentions of the regime against him, Nana Akufo-Addo was advised to stay in exile. He returned to the country after a year a half, despite passionate advice to the contrary, to continue his courageous battles against dictatorship and human rights abuses.
That was the second time he had been in exile. The first exile was occasioned by his opposition to General I K Acheampong's military dictatorship, and the attempt to impose a one party government, UNIGOV, on the people of Ghana. The demonstrations Nana Akufo-Addo inspired and led scuttled the Acheampong imposition dream.
While in exile for three months in London, he spearheaded international pressure that contributed in no mean way to the palace coup that ousted the Acheampong regime.
Today, Mr Rawlings, through the National Democratic Congress which he hastily formed in 1992 to enable him don civilian garb and appear to contest in that year's general elections, is seeking to once again control the destiny of the country he led through the barrel of the gun for almost twenty years - 1982-2001, through a surrogate who has publicly declared that he would seek Mr Rawlings' counsel every second of the day: John Evans Atta Mills.