Asiedu-Nketia And John Mahama Once Fired Shots Into Akufo-Addo’s Nima Residence

I am not a security expert, but I was discussing the security cordon around the President, Nana Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo, long before the official decision by the chiefs of the country’s security establishment to clear out the squatters and other legitimately located citizens and inhabitants massed up around the Nimafamily house and private residence of the former Justice and Foreign Minister. And so the urgent call by Mr. AdibSaani, described by the media as a national-security analyst with the JatiKay Center for Human Security and Peace Building, comes as absolutely no news to me at all (See “Flagstaff House Not Safe for Akufo-Addo – Security Expert” GhanaGuardian.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/12/18). I, however, strongly disagree with Mr. Saani that the Nkrumah-constructed Peduase Lodge looks more like the most suitable residential alternative for the President.

I have decided to appropriate the admittedly sensational caption of this column as the most effective means of highlighting the fact that the Nima private residence of Nana Akufo-Addo, where he has resided for most of his life, is actually far more of a high security risk than his cynical and ill-willing detractors and political opponents are making it seem. Maybe it is in the prime interest of those who literally moved Heaven and Hell to ensure that the man the key operatives of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) most love to hate never occupied the Flagstaff House as the latter’s Chief Resident. And now that, unfortunately for these bottom-trough feeders, Divine Providence, in Her /His inscrutable wisdom (my profound apologies to former President Mahama), has auspiciously scattered the wicked plans of our career nation-wreckers, their next strategic line of assault has been to ensure the perennial destabilization of the peace and quiet of their arch-nemesis.

You see, what his detractors and political opponents, and these are both external and internal, flatly refuse to accept here, but which Mr. Saani, the JatiKay Center’s Security analyst, wisely and constructively underscores is the fact that the eviction of the squatters and other long- and legitimately-established corporate entities located in uncomfortably close proximity to the President’s Nima residence, squarely comes under the statutory aegis of “Eminent Domain.” In other words, the safety and security of the substantive President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana, by law, is of paramount significance and one that cannot be compromised or irresponsibly relegated to the proverbial back-burner. And it has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with the private wishes of our discursive protagonist. In other words, decisions regarding the safety of President Akufo-Addo is one that exclusively belongs to the top operatives of the nation’s security establishment. It is not one of Akufo-Addo’s routine judgment calls.

But what is even more annoyingly ironic is the fact that those presently calling for Nana Akufo-Addo to relocate to his official residence at the Flagstaff House, particularly the movers-and-shakers of the main opposition National Democratic Congress, never demanded that either the Interim-President John Dramani Mahama or the newly-elected President Mahama move to take up full residency or occupancy at the Flagstaff House. And so why are the same characters now calling for President Akufo-Addo to move into the Flagstaff House? Is it because these NDC operatives and their left-leaning allies believe that Ghana’s former Chief Diplomat is a Ghanaian of second-class citizenship status? And, by the way, Nana Akufo-Addo is not the first democratically elected Ghanaian leader to decide not to fully occupy his official residence. There are the well-known cases of Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, President Edward Akufo-Addo and President John Agyekum-Kufuor. And for quite a short while, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings.

Indeed, it is on record that former President Mahama is the only Ghanaian leader who occupied both the official residence of Ghana’s Vice-President and the Flagstaff House at the same time, even as the substantive President of Ghana and cavalierly violated our statutory rules or constitution by adamantly refusing to let his legitimately named and elected Vice-President, Mr. Kwesi BekoeAmissah-Arthur, legally assume occupancy of the latter’s official residence. Talk of megalomaniacal greed. And you bet President Mahama’s scofflaw’s adamancy cost Ghanaian taxpayers far more than it presently costs us to provide security for Nana Akufo-Addo, when the $13 million Mahama’s Vice-Presidential Villa boondoggle is factored into account.

But that the security of the President’s Nima private residence needs to be promptly boosted, rather than unwisely relaxed, as many of his NDC detractors are virulently and cynically promoting, is evinced by the fact that in the lead-up to the 2016 general election, a group of NDC thugs, masquerading as health-marchers or walkers, shot several bullets with what the Nima police described as assault rifles into the compound of then-Candidate Akufo-Addo’s residence. The latter was out campaigning in another part of the country, as I vividly recall, but his wife and present First Lady, Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo, was in the house. And so it is all too glaring that NDC operatives like Mr. Felix Ofosu-Kwakye, the former Mahama Deputy Communications Minister, have everything but goodwill and/or good wishes for the safety and comfort, let alone peace-of-mind, for President Akufo-Addo.

And by the way, in the wake of the firing of several gunshots into Nana Akufo-Addo’s Nima compound, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the longtime General-Secretary of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress, lamely claimed that the hired NDC goons had been provoked by supporters of the then-main opposition leader. Asked why the so-called health-marchers/walkers had not diverted their march away from the now-President Akufo-Addo’s residence, in order to avoid the possibility of just this kind of confrontation, the man popularly known as General Mosquito curtly retorted, “This is a free country.” Predictably, then-President Mahama, who had resorted to wearing military uniforms, “Kaakaamotobistically,” as the now-Vice-President MahamuduBawumia sarcastically put it, heartily and deafeningly endorsed the Mosquito-sponsored vigilante assault with absolute silence.

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