A Travesty of Nothing!

I read Dr. Raymond Atuguba’s screed titled “It’s Travesty to the Rule of Law If Akufo-Addo Inducts New VC for UEW – Atuguba” (Modernghana.com 9/18/18) and could not help but feel contempt and ire for the predictably crass display of insufferable arrogance and lack of cultural refinement on the part of the author. For one, the suggestion that the entire life and culture of the University of Education at Winneba (UEW) should grind to a halt merely because Prof. Mawutor Avoke, the recently dismissed Vice-Chancellor of that University, has a case pending before the Supreme Court of Ghana challenging his all-too-legitimate dismissal is nothing short of the scandalously absurd.

Indeed, the routine practice is to allow the life of the UEW to proceed as usual until the Apex Court hands down its decision either reversing or affirming the appointment of the new Vice-Chancellor. You see, Prof. Atuguba seems to clearly, albeit uncomfortably, appreciate the fact that it is highly unlikely for the dismissal order of his former client to be reversed and Prof. Avoke restored to his former post, which is why he desperately resorted to the ineffectual use of psychological warfare against the UEW’s Board of Trustees and the University Council. It is also rather insulting for the former Executive-Secretary to former President John Dramani Mahama to so condescendingly presume the lawyers for the respondents to be bereft of any remarkable appreciation for the dynamics of the legal and judicial process.

This is obviously the hallmark of a legal Johnny-Just-Come-Lately. But what is even more significant to point out is the fact that the critic conveniently fails to inform his audience the exact circumstances under which the dismissed UEW Vice-Chancellor was appointed to the post. It well appears that any National Democratic Congress’ political appointee has an inalienable entitlement to any post so appointed to but, somehow, any predecessor appointed to the same position has absolutely no right to the same under any circumstances, if that appointee happens to have been offered the job by operatives of the New Patriotic Party. At any rate, short of virulent ethnocentrism, how else could both the former UEW Vice-Chancellor and the University’s former Financial Officer have come from the same ethnic group? Was it, for instance, because there were no other qualified candidates for the post of Financial Officer from any of the other ethnic groups or polities in the country?

And would such a situation be countenanced in the Anlo-Ewe strongholds of the Volta Region, where in the recent past Akan-descended police chiefs and judges have either been brutally assaulted or summarily executed by stabbing and other forms of murder? Maybe Dr. Atuguba never heard of the systematically and deliberately orchestrated assassinations of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court Judges, namely, Mrs. Cecilia Koranteng-Addow and Messrs. Frederick Poku-Sarkodie and Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong, which is why he so hastily trotted ethnocentrism into his argument. And did ever bother to inspect the ethnicity of the Board Members of the Mahama-constituted erstwhile Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA)? That is what ethnocentrism is decidedly about.

It is also quite clear that Dr. Atuguba withdrew his legal services because he knew perfectly well that his clients had absolutely no legal legs to stand on. Then also, the University of Ghana’s Law School lecturer correctly surmised that if he had dared to exhibit any professionally reckless behavior construed as judicial contempt, his license to practice law would have been either indefinitely suspended or promptly and permanently revoked. Thus, he made the very wise choice of withdrawing from the case in order to learn how to more strategically and opportunely pick his battles, as it were.

As for his nonsensical second-guessing of the strategies purportedly adopted by the respondents, the former counsel for the plaintiffs only grossly exhibits his abject naivety and irreparable incompetence. If, indeed, he was so intimately familiar with the game plan of the opponents of his former clients, why didn’t he deftly outmaneuver them? What is shameful here is for people like Dr. Atuguba who have absolutely no respect for our country’s judicial system – check the track-record of the National Democratic Congress – to be pretending as if it was the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and not the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who have criminally corrupted the integrity of our judicial system.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 19, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]