This Is Trokosi Legal Acrobatics

I have often advised students of my principles of journalism classes to fully appreciate the fact that no two humans or news reporters, in the context of the subject of this column, for that matter, hearing or listening to the same speech or message at the same time are apt to interpret and report such speech or message in the exact same manner, content-wise. The primary reason being that whatever we either witness or hear, which we relate to others, is invariably mediated or colored by any number of subjective factors, including but not exclusive to, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, class and political orientation. That was precisely the decision that I arrived at when I read two separate news reports on the landmark decision reached by Justice KwekuAckah-Boafo, of the Accra High Court (See “Stop False Propaganda, Deliberate Misrepresentations in Exton Cubic Case – Dep. AG” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/9/18).

The decision was in regard to a lawsuit brought before Justice Ackah-Boafo by the politically and commercially infamous Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the younger brother of former President John Dramani Mahama (See “Ibrahim Mahama to Get Licence [sic] Back” Classfmonline.com / Modernghana.com 2/18/18). In the main, as poignantly related by Deputy Attorney-General Godfred Yeboah-Dame, Justice Ackah-Boafo roundly rejected the suit by the proprietor of the mining company called Engineers & Planners, on the straight-forward or open-and-shut grounds that Mr. Ibrahim Mahama had used unlawful means to obtain a mineral-prospecting license from the Mineral Commission to prospect for bauxite in the Nyinahin Forest Reserve in the Asante Region.

What was ironic or paradoxical about the decision handed down by Justice Ackah-Boafo, was the fact that the presiding jurist also reprimanded Mr. John Peter Amewu, the Lands, Forestry and Natural Resources Minister, for supposedly not having afforded Mr. Ibrahim Mahama a fair hearing before deciding to revoke the bauxite-prospecting license of a company called Exton Cubic which, we are told, is also owned by the plaintiff. Now, in retailing the same judicial proceedings for public consumption, the reporter for Classfmonline.com, for whatever motives, chose to highlight the purely incidental or side comment of Justice Ackah-Boafo, regarding the imperative need for Mr. Amewu to have given a fair hearing to Mr. Ibrahim Mahama and his assigns and representatives.

Well, what I find to be curiously fascinating here is the clearly contradictory reprimand of the Lands and Natural Resources Minister by the presiding judge. It is paradoxical because Justice Ackah-Boafo concedes beforehand that, indeed, Exton Cubic had not legally acquired its license to prospect for bauxite in the Nyinahin Forest Reserve. And so how else fair could Mr. Amewu have been, when it was quite obvious that the younger brother of former President Mahama had used illegal or criminal means to obtain his license to exploit the Nyinahin Forest Reserve?

For those of our readers who may have so soon forgotten the same, it was Justice Ackah-Boafo who boldly and fearlessly and fairly found Dr. ZanetorAgyeman-Rawlings, the eldest daughter of former President Jerry John Rawlings, to have deliberately used foul means to finesse her way into the parliamentary candidacy of the Korle-Klottey Constituency of Central-Accra, with the equally criminal complicity of Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the NDC’s General-Secretary, on the ticket of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress.

Mr. EdudziTamakloe, the same lawyer who represented Mr. Ibrahim Mahama in the Exton Cubic debacle, would unorthodoxly ride roughshod over the ruling of Justice Ackah-Boafo by appealing to the Wood-presided Supreme Court of Ghana and have Dr. Agyeman-Rawlings declared qualified to run for parliament on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress. Now, with the NDC in opposition, and knowing how the judicial system operates in Ghana, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Ibrahim Mahama would have his ill-acquired license validated anytime soon to enable this most notorious of scofflaws adamantly resume his systematic destruction and desecration of our pristine lands and waterbodies.

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