JB Danquah-Adu and Peter Kenyenso Were Savagely Executed Under the Watch of President Mahama

He can cynically and conveniently make smug and self-righteous references to the killings of Messrs. Ahmed Hussein-Suale and Joseph Miigaai Jakperuk and Ms. Josephine Asante in recent weeks. But Ghanaians have not forgotten that the most politically significant or, actually heinous, assassinations took place under the watch of then-President John Dramani Mahama, namely, the allegedly deliberately contracted bedroom stabbing-death of Mr. JB Danquah-Adu, then the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-North and grandson of the legendary Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics, to wit, Dr. JB Danquah who, by the way, had also been contractually assassinated by hired guns of the Kwame Nkrumah-led government of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). And on the latter count, of course, ought to be significantly observed the fact that former President Mahama’s own father, Mr. Emmanuel Adama Mahama, was a key operative of the Convention People’s Party.

What I am clearly suggesting here is that the political-killer instincts are deeply and, perhaps, even inextricably embedded in the genes and veins of the former Rawlings’ Communication Minister. Which is why it came as absolutely no news, when the former President recently vowed to show Ghanaians the true “Boot-for-Boot” colors of the key players of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). We must also add to the list of significant national figures viciously and savagely executed, Mafia-style, under the watch of Mr. Mahama, Messrs. Peter Kenyenso, of Nkwanta-South, formerly a part of the Volta Region, and recently incorporated into the newly created Oti Region. What is even more significant to note here is that Mr. Kenyenso was personally handpicked and appointed the Nkwanta-South’s District Chief Executive (DCE) by then-President Mahama himself.

But wait until you, the Dear Reader, learns about the bitter complaints made by the point-blank slain man’s own family that, even though Mr. Mahama was smack in the country at the time of Mr. Kenyenso’s funeral, the Bole-Bamboi native made absolutely no attempt to put in a decent appearance at the funeral. Mr. Mahama’s own aides, including then-Communications Minister, Dr. Edward Omane-Boamah, were dodgy about the abject failure of the Mahama regime’s security operatives to identify, arrest and prosecute the allegedly lone assassin of Mr. Kenyenso. You see, the grim irony here is for the man who never publicly accounted for the death of his former boss, as Vice-President to then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, to be self-righteously accusing his much more security-conscious and far more administratively efficient successor of being unacceptably lax with the state of our national security.

Then again, what does one make of then-Vice-President Mahama’s hearty celebration of the demise of then-President Atta-Mills as an auspicious act of Divine Providence? Then also, there were the equally gruesome assassinations of Mr. Adams Mahama, then-Chairman of the Upper-East’s regional branch of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party. In that incident, incumbent President John Dramani Mahama sneeringly, suspiciously and smuggle showed himself to be far more interested in the indefinite suspension of Mr. Paul Awentami Afoko, the man whose younger brother had been reliably pinpointed by a dying Mr. Adams Mahama as the prime suspect of the dying man’s acid slaying. “Where is your Chairman?” the then President Mahama would be widely quoted as having teased the key operatives of the then main opposition New Patriotic Party while he was campaigning in the Volta Region.

There were also other killings of New Patriotic Party supporters and local executives at Kumasi-Asawase, in the Asante Region, and Dansoman, in the Greater-Accra Region, whose prime suspects had been alleged to be operatives of the then-ruling and Mahama-led National Democratic Congress. You see, Dear Reader, the problem that we are saddled with here has more to do with the smug and cavalier attitude of then-President Mahama towards the chaotic state of Ghana’s national security, and not merely the grossly inefficient skills of the latter to resolving the same. Couple the foregoing with the extremely badly managed national economy, and the gross maladministration and abject incompetence of the Mahama regime begin to assume the very height of downright political criminality (See “Ghanaians Feel Insecure Under Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 2/22/19).

If, indeed, Ghanaians feel insecure under the watch of Nana Akufo-Addo, this is primarily because in the runup to the 2016 Presidential Election, the operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress flooded the country with the sort of deadly assault weaponry that the prime suspect of the NDC-sponsored Hawks vigilante group used to savagely assassinate Mr. Wasihu Iddrisu, of the rival NDC-sponsored vigilante group called the Taskforce. What nerve to hear a “Boot-for-Boot” sponsor of terrorism like Mr. Mahama grandstanding about the abjectly poor state of our national security. The irony of the situation here is that if President Akufo-Addo begins to clamp down hard on the vigilante thugs in the country, it would be terror sponsors and accommodators like Mr. Mahama who would turn around and accuse Nana Akufo-Addo of recklessly assuming dictatorial powers, in gross violation of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 23, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]