Tsatsu Tsikata Is as Guilty as Rawlings and Cousin Kojo Tsikata in the Murder of the Judges

It puzzles me that in spite of the authoritative Special Investigations Board (SIB) Report that was released in the wake of the barbaric ethnic-cleansing assassination of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court Judges and the retired Major of the Ghana Armed Forces, some Ghanaian journalists persist in looking for predictably mendacious answers from the chief architects of this most dastardly of anti-human deeds to be ever committed in the Ghana of the twentieth century (See “Tsatsu Tsikata Reacts to the Killing of Judges in 1982” Modernghana.com 10/19/18). What does any media operative worthy of such designation expect Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata to say, when publicly confronted with the fact of whether he participated in the savage abduction and what was then poignantly chillingly described by the Justice Samuel Azu-Crabbe-chaired blue-ribbon commission as the “Mafia-style execution” of the Accra High Court Judges? That he was a most willing and jolly planner and participant of the same? No such expectation could be at once more naïve and downright preposterous.

To be certain, I don’t ever recall the mention of Mr. Tsikata, then a lecturer of law at the University of Ghana, in the SIB Report as one who was directly linked to the abduction and barbaric assassination and savage torching or conflagration of the corpses of the victims. But it is crystal clear that Mr. Tsikata, whose elder cousin, Capt. (Rd) Kojo Tsikata, was Chairman Jerry John Rawlings’ National Security Adviser and a vanguard member of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) cabinet, was intimate well enough with the Nkrumah-cashiered Capt. Tsikata to have been in the know about, or privy to, the abduction and murder of Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Frederick Poku-Sarkodie and Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong. What is clear and well known is the fact that lawyer Tsikata was the Legal Adviser of the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), that apocalyptically removed the Gen. FWK Akuffo-led Supreme Military Council (SMC-II) and summarily executed some 8 former junta rulers by firing squad and tens of hundreds of other Ghanaian citizens conveniently tagged as “Enemies of the Revolution.”

In sum, it was the spirit of anti-Akan ethnic hatred the flames of which were studiously and systematically fanned by the Rawlings-Tsikata Cabal that led to the brutal murder of the judges and the retired Ghana Army Major some three years later. Lawyer Tsikata was one of the architects of the infamous Public Tribunals and the People’s Courts that systematically orchestrated the wanton slaughter of tens of hundreds of innocent and civically responsible Ghanaian citizens. We need to indelibly underscore the fact that it was their legitimate judicial attempt to ethically and democratically reverse some of the legion travesties of justice meted many a hardworking Ghanaian entrepreneur by the Tsikata-inspired Public Tribunals and the People’s Courts that directly and punitively resulted in the brutal assassination of the Akan-descended judges on June 30, 1982.

But that the entire bloody butchery was deliberately orchestrated by the Rawlings-led Anlo-Ewe Mafia is clearly evinced by the rollcall of the criminal suspects named in the SIB Report, nearly all of whom were of either Ewe or northern ethnicity and strategically and expediently scapegoated by the leadership of the Provisional National Defense, including one member of the latter, Mr. Joachim Amartey-Kwei. The following is a list of the most infamous of the executioners, namely, Messrs. Samuel Michael Senyah, Johnny Dzandu, Tony Tekpor, Gordon Kwowu, Maama Nsurowua, Victor Gomeleshio and Daniel Alolga Akata Pore, all of them junior-ranked non-commissioned officers of the Ghana Armed Forces. What is most significant about the foregoing list of murder suspects is less about their ethnicity than the glaringly inescapable fact that as enlisted men of the Ghana Armed Forces, they had to, perforce, have had to be issued their bloody and godforsaken marching orders by some higherups.

And these higherups were, of course, not members of the top hierarchy capos of the Ghana Armed Forces but the Headquarters Commanders of the PNDC cabinet at Gondar Barracks and the Osu Castle. This is why no disingenuous or casuistic attempt by Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata to exculpate himself from the bloody and dastardly activities on the night of June 30, 1982 would muster scrutiny. You see, invoking the name of the now-Justice Jones Dotse, as the grizzled accomplice of the Sogakope Mafia Capos did recently, does absolutely nothing worthwhile to exonerate Lawyer Tsikata from his inescapable complicity in this most heinous crime against Ghanaian humanity. One can almost be certain that Justice Dotse must have squirmed on hearing his truly “hard-earned reputation” so cavalierly tarnished or brought so abjectly low by his old law school lecturer.

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