Excuse Me, Murtala?!

Murtala Mohammed

If, indeed, Capt (Rtd.) Kojo Tsikata paid a visit to the Supreme Court of Ghana while the Atuguba-presided hearings of the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party petition impugning the validity of the 2012 presidential election was in session, then, indeed, the presence of the former Rawlings' National Security Adviser was unmistakably aimed at sending shivers down the spines of the nine panel members hearing the case ( See "'Let's Protect Dignity of Presidency'" Daily Graphic/Ghanaweb.com 5/29/13).

Capt. Tsikata's presence in the Atuguba-presided courtroom was eerily aimed at intimidating the justices, because it was under the watch of the former National Security Adviser when on June 30, 1982, the three Akan-descended High Court judges were abducted and summarily executed, Mafia-style, at the Bundase Military range, at the behest and instigation of Rawlings cabinet appointees, including Capt. Kojo Tsikata!

After the latter and the then-Chairman Jerry John Rawlings had vehemently denied any knowledge of and/or participation in the aforesaid dastardly deed, an independent investigations panel composed of the leading legal lights at the time, released what came to be widely known as the SIB Report, which emphatically concluded that the veritable ethnic cleansing of Justices Sarkodie, Agyepong and Koranteng-Addow had, in fact, been categorically authorized by operatives situated at the highest echelons of the government of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).

Now, one does not have to be a genius thinker and/or philosopher to arrive at the stark fact of the infamous Sogakope-Trokosi Mafia having inescapably authorized the brutal assassination of the aforementioned judges. Predictably, some clinically unconscionable hacks of the PNDC spawn, the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), prefer to cynically dub this most heinous crime against humanity as merely "an unfortunate incident" of passing significance in the postcolonial political history and culture of Ghana.

What needs highlighting here, however, is the wistful fact that today human butchers and reprobates like Capt. Kojo Tsikata are protected by unorthodox provisions flagrantly inserted into Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution. Indeed, at the time of granting blanket indemnity from prosecution to political criminals like Messrs.

Tsikata and Rawlings, provisions expressly limiting the capacity of these "pardoned" criminals to intimidate and persecute their former captives - or Ghanaians at large - as well as to seriously undermine the conduct and ministration of our current Constitution, ought to have also been inserted into the Constitution, if only to prevent criminal characters like Capt. Tsikata from threatening the professional independence of the judiciary.

What is unremittingly worrisome here, of course, is to hear ministerial appointees like Mr. Murtala Muhammed, one of the two deputies assigned to the so-called Ministry of Information and Media Relations, pooh-pooh the veritable threat posed by Capt. Tsikata to the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court, and Ghanaian democracy in general, as being, somehow, integral to the fundamental human and civil right of every Ghanaian citizen to lend active support to his/her political party.

"We have been seeing the presence of NPP gurus in court on a daily basis," Mr. Muhammed is reported to have riposted at a press briefing with journalists at the Flagstaff House. The fact of the matter is that Capt. Tsikata is a very special case; he is an infamous human butcher and a certified assassin whose right to the democratic freedoms granted by Ghana's 1992 Constitution has been made possible only because of patently unorthodox indemnity provisions inserted into the Constitution.

In other words, Capt. Kojo Tsikata is a veritable monster who ought not to be allowed unguarded access to any civic and/or public building besides his own private residence and, of course, those of his comrades-in-crime.