The Real Truth May Not Be Pleasant

After reading the news article in which the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Mental Health Authority, or the Psychiatrist-General, is reported to be saying that conflicting testimonies or confessions allegedly given to police investigators by the prime suspect in the brutal murder of Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu does not necessarily mean that Mr. Daniel Asiedu is mentally unstable, it is fast beginning to convince me, or rather dawn on me, that the masterminds behind the patent assassination of Mr. Danquah-Adu, then the New Patriotic Party's Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa North, may very well defy or contradict our well-founded suspicions and/or expectations (See “J. B. Danquah's Murder Suspect Is Mentally Sound – Dr. Akwasi Osei” MyPowerFmOnline.com / Modernghana.com 6/22/18).

All well-meaning Ghanaian citizens want to get to the bottom of this most heinous of crimes against humanity. And that is all that matters; which is that we may very much regret to learn about the identities of those who have now been publicly and judicially alleged to have contracted Mr. Asiedu to brutally rub out or liquidate Mr. Danquah-Adu. Indeed, as many of our readers may already know, we have just learned that the prime suspect in Mr. Danquah-Adu's murder has confessed before an Accra District Court judge, I believe, that he had been contracted by some members of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to take out the paternal grandson of the legendary and immortalized Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics. And that the prime suspect and his accomplice, Mr. Vincent Bosso, would secure their freedom in the event of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party's assuming the democratic reins of governance in the wake of the 2016 general election.

Now, I have a problem with this rather treacherous, to speak much less about the patently flimsy, conditional promise, because it clearly does not seem to me that the then-ruling Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had any avid interest in tracking down, arresting and promptly and rigorously prosecuting the suspects in the brutal stabbing-death of Mr. Danquah-Adu, a professionally trained Charted Accountant and a quite successful businessman by many reliable accounts. To be certain, in the immediate wake of the brutal slaying of Mr. Danquah-Adu, all media reports pointed to at least one prominent and notoriously violent insider of the Mahama Flagstaff House, recently renamed Jubilee House, having masterminded the cold-calculated assassination of Mr. Danquah-Adu.

The preceding notwithstanding, it would be morally as well as emotionally and psychologically cathartic to have Mr. Asiedu name the alleged New Patriotic Party's criminal masterminds who reportedly contracted him for his godforsaken job. But, of course, it would also be scandalously naïve for anybody to facilely assume that the mere naming of the alleged criminal masterminds in the assassination of Mr. Danquah-Adu would necessarily mark the definitive conclusion of the case. The available evidence would have to convincingly corroborate the “confession” of the prime suspect. Needless to say, it makes perfect sense that a frustrated Mr. Asiedu would name names on the quite credible grounds that his alleged paymasters have literally left him in the lurch, while they callously carouse or enjoy the goodies engendered by the 2016 epic political victory of the New Patriotic Party. But, of course, this aspect of his most recent narrative may just as well have been concocted for him by some members of the Mahama Posse.

You see, Dear Reader, I am the grandnephew of Nana Akyea-Mensah (Barima Ohemeng), the savagely slain and immortalized Kingmaker of Akyem-Abuakwa and King of Akyem-Apedwa at the time of his death. I also have a conjugal relative by the name of Mr. Laing Yeboah, then-District Chairman of the Ashongman, Greater-Accra, New Patriotic Party – or was it Dome-Kwabenya? – whose brutal Mafia-style execution in his home, some 11 years ago, has yet to be resolved. We know that his brutal and summary execution was an inside job, because at least one prominent NPP operative personally promised to take care of matters. Well, that was the last time that anybody heard of anything being done to bring the contractual assassins of Mr. Yeboah to book.

About the one question on which I vehemently beg to disagree with the Psychiatrist-General, is Dr. Osei's assertion that if the parties involved in the protracted indictment and drawn-out trial of Mr. Asiedu really believed the murder suspect to be mentally unbalanced, or unstable, they would have promptly referred the prime suspect in Mr. Danquah-Adu's stabbing death to the operatives of the National Mental Health Authority. We need to remind Dr. Osei of the fact that we did not see such referral happen in the case of the Brong-Ahafo native who allegedly attempted to assassinate then-President John Dramani Mahama at a church attended by both the former president and the then-Chief Justice, Mrs. Georgina Theodora Wood. At any rate, hasn't the lawyer for Mr. Asiedu demanded that his client be afforded the services of a psychiatrist, a demand that has been promptly refused by the judge currently presiding over the case?

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