The “Kpegah” Strain of the “Volta Virus” Erupts

It appears that not having fully satisfied themselves with unleashing a vicious and traumatic defeat at the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for Election 2008, certain germinal strains of the politically lethal “Volta Virus” have decided to further drive their apparent arch-nemesis into total and permanent oblivion. And going by the age-old, charitably professional tradition of triumphant pugilists desisting from further assaulting their canvass-reeling opponents, the eruption of the latest strain of the “Volta Virus” against the personality and political status and stature of Nana Akufo-Addo is rather dastardly and unforgivably shameful.

The latest strain of the “Volta Virus” is being carried by a human vector by the name of Justice Yaw Kpegah, a former Acting-Chief Justice of the Ghanaian Supreme Court. Mr. Kpegah, it may be recalled, resigned from the august bench on December 5, 2007, only two days before Election 2008, in the wake of a quite curious lawsuit that he had earlier on filed against a purported breach of certain unspecified provisions of Ghana's 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution by the outgoing Kufuor government (See “Justice Kpegah Drags Akufo-Addo to Court” Joy FM Online 1/4/09).

Actually, we first heard of Mr. Kpegah's lawsuit in connection with the landmark verdict of Justice Henrietta Abban in the drawn-out Tsikata case. The latter involved Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, a lawyer and former CEO of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), convicted of having recklessly used his official position for the benefit of his private business associates, as well as himself, at the expense of the Ghanaian government and the taxpayer. The case that became widely known as the Valley Farms Affair cost the GNPC several hundred thousand dollars. And for six protracted years, the man widely credited with having been the lead-architect in the establishment of the judicial death-squad known as the People's Court, vehemently and arrogantly insisted that he had done no wrong, and even attributed his condign criminal prosecution to a New Patriotic Party government out on a witch-hunt. Justice Abban sentenced the former law lecturer of the University of Ghana to what was widely considered to be a wrist-slapping 5-year prison term.

In his alleged lawsuit against Nana Akufo-Addo, Justice Kpegah claims that the December 2007 primary electoral acclamation of the former Abuakwa-South Member of Parliament as presidential candidate of the then-ruling NPP constituted a flagrant breach of both the Ghanaian Constitution as well as the Constitution of the New Patriotic Party itself. This is because, according to Justice Kpegah, Nana Akufo-Addo failed to clinch the 50% of delegate votes, as stipulated by the NPP Constitution.

On the latter score, it may be recalled that although Nana Akufo-Addo had clearly failed to garner the constitutionally required percentage of delegate votes, Mr. Alan Kyerematen, his closest nomination rival, had graciously bowed out of a scheduled run-off, thereby saving the party an unnecessarily rancorous and strategically vitiating nomination process, to speak less of financial expenditure involved in the printing of run-off ballot papers and managerial personnel.

So far, with what little that is known about the contents of his lawsuit, Mr. Kpegah is not saying whether the Constitution of the NPP prevents the party from nominating its flagbearers by acclamation, should such need arise. The former Supreme Court judge is also not telling the riveted Ghanaian public that, indeed, he is a registered and card-carrying member of the NPP, and that acclaiming Nana Akufo-Addo as the party's candidate for Election 2008 personally violated Mr.Kpegah's right of dissent as an NPP delegate to the 2007 congress.

What Justice Kpegah is, reportedly, known to be saying is that “his [legal suit] is [primarily] motivated by the failure of Nana Akufo-Addo to concede defeat to Prof. John Evans Atta[-]Mills in the just[-]ended [presidential] election run-off” (Joy Fm Online 1/4/090.

On the foregoing score, it is not quite clear what the former senior denizen of Ghana's supreme bench means by Nana Akufo-Addo having either failed, or flatly refused, to concede victory/defeat to the now-President-Elect Atta-Mills. For, it is verifiably documented that in the wake of the Electoral Commissioner's declaration of the former University of Ghana Law School professor as winner of Election 2008, Nana Akufo-Addo emphatically, albeit understandably grudgingly, asserted his unmistakable recognition of the validity of the results of Election 2008, as publicly declared by Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, chairman of the Ghana Electoral Commission (EC).

In view of the preceding, even assuming for the mere sake of an argument that the defeated flagbearer of the NPP had not personally called on Prof. Atta-Mills to concede victory/defeat to the latter, wherein lies Nana Akufo-Addo's allegedly flagrant violation of Ghana's Fourth-Republican Constitution, especially when even Dr. Afari-Gyan himself, in declaring Prof. Atta-Mills winner of the Election 2008 presidential run-off, had also acknowledged in good faith that, indeed, polling rules were breached to an extent verging on outright criminality, and that the latter was being duly referred to law-enforcement agencies for prompt and further investigation and prosecution, if deemed necessary and/or appropriate?

May we hereby suggest, plausibly, that the motive behind Justice Kpegah's attempt to legally impugn Nana Akufo-Addo's leadership of the New Patriotic Party has at least an oblique relationship to President Kufuor's decision to pass over the former Acting-Chief Justice by naming Mrs. Georgina Wood as the substantive Chief Justice of the Ghana Supreme Court? Mr. Kpegah ought to, by now, be solaced by the fact that President Kufuor has equally given Nana Akufo-Addo a raw deal, by overtly railroading the presidential campaign of the latter, once it became clear that Old-Sleepy Eyes could not strong-arm his party into shooing in his favorite candidate.

In the immediate aftermath of Nana Akufo-Addo's rather narrow defeat by Prof. Atta-Mills, in the 2008 presidential run-off, former president Jeremiah John Rawlings issued a quite belligerent statement warning disgruntled members and supporters of the NPP against any attempt to unleashing unprovoked acts of violence at NDC members, supporters and/or sympathizers. Mr. Rawlings described the possibility of any such act as one that bordered on outright “madness.” It would, doubtlessly, be quite interesting to learn what the founding-proprietor of the NDC has to say about Justice Kpegah's irritable attempt to impugn the leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo vis-à-vis the now-opposition New Patriotic Party.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

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