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Why Rawlings Could Not Have Killed the Judges in 1979

Feature Article Why Rawlings Could Not Have Killed the Judges in 1979
OCT 15, 2018 LISTEN

His great handicap with honesty and truth-telling is very well known to most of those who of us who have steadily followed his erratic and bloody political career. So it came as absolutely no surprise to me that Chairman Jerry John Rawlings would put the proverbial cart before the horse, by mendaciously claiming that had he wanted to cause the savage abduction and Mafia-style execution of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court Judges, and the retired Ghana Armed Forces Major, he would have done so three years earlier in June 1979, when there was a massive clamor by the Ghanaian public for bloodletting, and not on June 30, 1982 (See “Rawlings Shoots Down Multimedia’s ‘Who Killed the Judges?’ Documentary” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/14/18). The fact of the matter is that in June 1979, absolutely nobody was calling for the slaughter of any members of the judiciary, as far as the records show.

We know for a fact that the foregoing assertion is patently false because even as the SIB Report notes, the clearly established reasons for the unconscionable abduction and slaughter of Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Frederick Poku-Sarkodie and Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong did not exist until after the June 4, 1979 Rawlings-led mutiny that ushered in the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta had exited the scene. And the main reason, even as the Justice Samuel Azu-Crabbe-chaired Special Investigations Board’s Report clearly stated, was because the aforementioned slain judges had dared to let justice rule over the land, once again, by responsibly revisiting and reversing a legion cases of judicial travesty that had been perpetrated by the AFRC-sponsored Public Tribunals.

On the latter count must also be recalled the fact that prior to its handing over of the reins of governance to the newly elected President Hilla (Babinin) Limann and his People’s National Party (PNP), Chairman Rawlings and his AFRC cronies and associates had sternly and emphatically warned the members of the judiciary that any attempt to reopen, review and/or reverse any of the cases and verdicts handed down by the AFRC Apostles of Probity, Accountability, Transparency and Justice would be met with swift and the most deadly of reprisals. And this, of course, was exactly what happened. About the only thing special about the preceding fact regards the apparent ethnic-cleansing objective that attended the murder of the three High Court Judges every one of whom was of Akan descent. For instance, it is very well known that there were other non-Akan-descended Accra High Court Judges who had also reviewed and reversed some of the judicial travesties perpetrated by the AFRC-sponsored Public Tribunals.

It is also quite well known that on the very night of the abduction of the judges, at least a couple of other non-Akan judges (including one Judge Adzovie) had also been picked up and been promptly released, shortly after their Ewe ethnicity had been firmly established. But what is even more significant for our present purposes is for Mr. Rawlings to boldly and honestly accept the incontrovertible fact that it was Chairman Rawlings and his maternal cousin and PNDC National Security Adviser, Capt. (Rd) Kojo Tsikata, who singularly and exclusively masterminded the brutal assassination of the Accra High Court Judges, and not the physical executioners of these judges, namely, Messrs. Amedeka, Tony Tekpor and Dzandu, the latter two of whom were summarily executed by firing squad; and, of course, Mr. Joachim Amartey Kwei, a bona fide insider of the PNDC, who had directly colluded and vindictively collaborated with the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy to liquidate the judges.

Predictably, Mr. Rawlings would mischievously have his Amen-Corner captive audience and those among us who were either not yet born or were too young to have studiously followed the sanguinary contemporary turn of events believe that the criminal masterminds behind the assassination of the judges have already been meted justice. The fact of the matter is that contrary to what Chairman Rawlings would have the rest of us believe, the real criminal masterminds behind the brutal slaying of the judges, like the alleged masterminds of the barbaric decapitation of Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani, II, the Overlord of Dagbon, and some 39 of his courtiers, have never been brought to book and may never be brought to book. It is therefore abjectly disingenuous for Chairman Rawlings to so ignobly underestimate the intelligence of present-day Ghanaian youths by unconscionably suggesting that, somehow, the real killers of the Accra High Court Judges and the retired Major of the Ghana Armed Forces, Major Sam Acquah, were promptly and swiftly brought to justice. Else, what accounts for the existence of Messrs. Rawlings and Tsikata to-day, and the equally dastardly insertion of some Indemnity Clauses and Provisos into the country’s Fourth-Republican Constitution?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 14, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]

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