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13.07.2019 Feature Article

Time for Woyome to Shut Up and Pay Up!

Time for Woyome to Shut Up and Pay Up!
13.07.2019 LISTEN

One of his platoons of attorneys once emailed a threatening letter to yours truly for having vowed that Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome would be legally and legitimately forced to pay up the GHȻ 51.2 Million that he extorted from the coffers of our National Treasury and, by extension, from the Ghanaian taxpayer. Well, finally, the Big Blindfolded Black Lady has spoken from the bench of the Arusha, Tanzania-based African Human Rights Court. And Her conclusive and definitive verdict is that it is long past time for the National Democratic Congress’ Cash-Cow to shut up and pay up (See “Read Judgment: African Court on Human Rights Dismisses Woyome Case” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/28/19).

I have forgotten his full-name – for it’s been quite a while now – but I vividly recall the last name of the Woyome attorney who threatened me was Mr. Dogbe. I boldly bet on my moorings or ethnic and cultural background to Mr. Dogbe and let it be known to the mouth-foaming SOB that I and the likes of me had never been subject to the slavish payment of tributes or taxes to the likes of Messrs. Dogbe, Woyome and their godforsaken kinsmen and clansmen.

The journey has, needless to say, been unduly long and quite a slew of people gotten burned and vilified along the road, not the least of them being Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, the current Independent Special Public Prosecutor, who was brazenly and summarily dismissed from the ministerial cabinet of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, who had staunchly and publicly and fiercely, we might aptly and pointedly add, defended Mr. Woyome for having the inalienable constitutional entitlement to every pesewa of the GHȻ 51.2 Million that was criminally awarded him by the Mills-Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress. We would, of course, learn that, indeed, Mr. Woyome’s Mega-Heist had been deliberately and systematically orchestrated with the complicity of nearly everybody who mattered on the Who’s Who’s List of the Chairman Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress.

Of special mention was the extant Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs. Betty Mold-Iddrisu and her deputy, Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro, the Office of the Finance Minister, among a platoon of others and, of course, the Mills-Mahama Presidency. Now, what is important to highlight here is that in voting 8-to-1 to dismiss the Woyome Case, the Arusha-based African Court of Human Rights categorically noted that while, indeed, some procedural missteps or blunders might have been committed by the operatives of Ghana’s judicial system, nevertheless, in absolutely no way were the human rights of the plaintiff flagrantly violated, as the Mega-Thief and his NDC’s World Bank backers have been insisting all along.

Now, what obviously remains to be done is for Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo and her Justice Ministry to waste absolutely no time, whatsoever, in liquidating the assets of this criminal convict – who in another period in our nation’s history would long since have been executed by firing squad – to pay back to the Ghanaian taxpayer what was extorted from the same about a decade ago, with interest and the relevant surcharges. Indeed, if yours truly had his way, all the key players in the Woyome Heist would equally be forced to face the full mellifluous rigors of the law. We make the latter observation because this thief has always maintained that his sort of Mega-Scam was, indeed, the corporate handiwork of virtually all the front-row leaders and key players of the National Democratic Congress. So, it may be up to Mr. Woyome, if he so decides, to collect whatever amounts he doled out either individually or severally to the beneficiaries of his mega-pelf.

To be certain, he could even decide to take some of his fellow corporate thieves and scam-artists to court in a bid to recovering some of his lost wealth. Whatever path or course of action he chooses to take is, of course, up to Mr. Woyome himself. We are also fully aware of the fact that even some key operatives of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) may very well have also benefited from Mr. Woyome’s ill-gotten wealth. Which ought to serve as an eyeopener to each and every Ghanaian, the inescapable fact that the sort of official corruption that President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been striving hard to both contain and drastically reduce, if not totally extirpate, is both cross-partisan and multidimensional.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 28, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]

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