President Puts Armed Robbers And Peace Disturbers On Notice

I have yet to read the full-speech delivered by President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo to mark the country’s 61st Independence Anniversary Celebration from British colonial rule, but I was singularly impressed by the stern cautionary note that the President sent out to those armed bandits and cop-killing burglars who seem determined to roil up the waters of peace and security in the country (See “No Miscreant Will [Be Allowed to] Create [a] Sense of Insecurity – Akufo-Addo Assures” Presidency.Gov.Gh / Ghanaweb.com 3/6/18).

This warning is especially significant, coming in the wake of the fatal jailbreak by a Nigerian-led band of armed robbers that resulted in the brutal shooting death of a police chief at the Kwabena, Accra, Police Station several weeks ago. Then, there was also the equally brutal shooting death of a military officer, Sgt. George Boakye, a security attaché to the Flagstaff House or the Presidency, who was gunned down on the Accra-Tema Highway. The victim had alighted from his car to pay his proverbial “water-rate,” when he was allegedly confronted by a small group of bandits who used Sgt. Boakye’s own sidearm to summarily execute him, PNDC-era Mafia style.

What especially enthused me about the President’s speech, was his solemn promise to oversee the immediate modernization and radical upgrade of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), in particular the way in which our police men and women are trained and equipped. He also spoke of the need to solicit the collaborative support of personnel from the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), if necessary, to complement the peacekeeping efforts of the members of the GPS. Even more encouraging was the promise by Nana Akufo-Addo to exponentially increase the size of the GPS to proportionately synch with a fast-growing Ghanaian population. It was the kind of presentation that most Ghanaian citizens desired to hear from their leader on this historic occasion, than the usual pabulum of how extortionate the erstwhile British colonizers had been, and who had fought the hardest or politically contributed the lion’s share of our liberation struggle efforts, and also who solely or uniquely deserves to be conferred with the accolade of Ghana’s “Founding Father.”

Indeed, it is an indisputable and readily verifiable fact of history that in the 15-year period that he dominated the Ghanaian political landscape, the self-conferred “Osagyefo” did more harm, both culturally and politically, to Ghanaians than the British colonial imperialists had done in 113 years. By the eve of his unquestionably auspicious overthrow, for instance, President Nkrumah had his handpicked fellow Nzema clansman representing Okyeman or Akyem-Abuakwa in Ghana’s Legislative Assembly, a man by the name of Mr. Kwesi Ghapson. That the Honorable-Mister Ghapson had not been elected by the casting of a single vote, or ballot paper, by the people of Akyem-Abuakwa, ought to inform Ghanaians about the abject level of ill-will and spite that President Nkrumah harbored for Akyems, in general, and the people and citizens of Akyem-Abuakwa, in particular.

What we clearly see here, of course, is Mr. Nkrumah’s attempt to “inferiorize” and psychologically humiliate and euthanize as well as politically exterminate the relatives, neighbors and friends of his most implacable arch-nemesis and political and ideological opponent, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah. In his primitive and inexcusably savage expression of visceral animus for Ghanaians of Akyem or Okyem descent, President Nkrumah proved himself to have been irredeemably worse than the British colonial imperialists. But such inveterate hatred for the Akyem, especially the Ofori-Atta Clan, clearly exemplified Nkrumah’s pathological affliction with Inferiority Complex. That he woefully failed in his deliberate and systematic drive to exterminate a whole sub-ethnic nationality of Akans, is a laudable testimony to the inimitable resilience of Okyeman among the rollcall of great and talented Ghanaian and global “achievers” and “overachievers,” if, indeed, there were really any such geopolitical descriptors.

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