What Penalty, Mr. Ablakwa?

It is rather laughable to hear Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa call for voters in his home region to severely punish the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), because the legally savvy Nana Akufo-Addo flatly refuses to be baited into prejudicially commenting, publicly and directly, on the ongoing Agyepong saga (See “Nana Addo, NPP Must Suffer Full Volta Penalty Over Agyapong's Comments – Okudzeto-Ablakwa” Modernghana.com 5/5/12).

It is a pity to hear a purportedly legally trained politician like Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa rather childishly and rascally dare Ghana's former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to commit what is judicially labeled as “sub judice,” or attempting to unduly influence a case that is pending before the court. And so, perhaps, Justice Francis Kpegah ought to be applauded for bitterly accusing President John Evans Atta-Mills of inordinately packing his cabinet with grossly incompetent student lawyers.

And true to Mr. Kpegah's observation, we find the Deputy Information Minister gratuitously comparing the proverbial apples to oranges, when Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa rather rudely accuses Nana Akufo-Addo of being rather quick to negatively comment on the Woyome Affair, in which the well-known financier of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) allegedly defrauded the judiciary and bilked the Ghanaian taxpayer to the whopping tune of GH¢52 million. Some quite credible estimates even put the amount involved as high as GH¢90 million.

For starters, while the Woyome case is clearly a classical felony case of the alleged criminal suspect attempting to bankrupt the central government and thereby viciously endangering the very security and existence of the Ghanaian state, that involving Mr. Agyepong, the New Patriotic Party's Member of Parliament for Assin-North, in the Central Region, purely concerns the use of incendiary speech to possibly provoke an egregious act of violence against a prejudicially targeted group of Ghanaian citizens.

What makes Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa's call laughable, of course, is the fact that the critic deliberately, conveniently and tendentiously ignores the shocking fact that the Woyome scandal, like the Agyepong tirade, was greeted with a mammoth rally and feasting in the Volta regional capital of Ho, with Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome being lavishly celebrated as a hero who almost single-handedly succeeded in wrecking the sovereign Ghanaian state.

Curiously, however, the Deputy Information Minister, himself a bona fide Anlo-Ewe, wants his audience to believe that extolling Mr. Woyome's epic act of criminality is perfectly legitimate or fair game, whereas according the same measure of public approbation to Mr. Agyepong is a capital crime. The latter pretty much explains the decision of an NDC partisan group to fatuously lobby the International Criminal Court (ICC) in order to have the Assin-North MP immured for life.

We must also ruefully observe the fact that whereas it took the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) less than 48 hours to arrest and handcuff Mr. Agyepong for questioning and possible prosecution, in the case of Mr. Woyome, it took months upon months. And since then, what Ghanaians have been witnessing is an absolute mockery of justice, in the form of a burlesque and circus performance in which this capital criminal suspect is from time to time trotted out and comically paraded before a judge, only to be released on his own recognizance and the hearing of his case routinely and generously adjourned.

Anyway, what Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and his ilk need to understand and appreciate, in no uncertain terms, is that the recent goodwill conference between Nana Akufo-Addo and members of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs was primarily meant to assure the naturally agitated residents of the region, following Mr. Agyepong's admittedly and disturbingly incendiary speech, that both the NPP and its chief candidate for Election 2012 do not share the unfortunate sentiments of the NPP-MP for Assin-North.

Needless to say, Nana Akufo-Addo is more than savvy enough to soberly recognize the fact that even long before the Agyepong faux-pas, which clearly is what it was, the overwhelming majority of voters in the Volta Region had been routinely and consistently “penalizing” the New Patriotic Party and its presidential candidates because, unlike the National Democratic Congress, the NPP was not founded by Togbui Avaklasu I, one of their own clansmen and chieftains or his close associates.

In sum, it was simply by way of healthily reaffirming his statesmanship credentials and moral integrity that Nana Akufo-Addo decided to confer with the Volta chiefs, not because he was desperately in search of votes. Now that kind of cheap and tawdry tack belongs to the ruling National Democratic Congress!

*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 Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].