Yes, the Law Works in Akufo-Addo’s Ghana, After All

He may not realize this so, perhaps, somebody had better tell Mr. Kwesi Pratt, Jr., that he lost his credibility in the mainstream of the Ghanaian media ages ago. Which simply means that he appears to take himself far too seriously than he is envisaged by the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian citizenry. For a man who is widely alleged to have served as a mole and a decoy for the Jerry John Rawlings-led juntas of the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) to be decrying the recent legitimate demolition of illegally sited businesses on landed property belonging to the Ghana Trade Fair Company Limited (GTCL) is more than annoying. It is simply inexcusable, to say the least (See “ ‘I Can’t Believe this is Happening in Ghana – Kwesi Pratt on ‘Rambo Style’ Trade Fair Demolition” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/19/20).

The demolition exercise, as it were, was legitimate because it had the blessing of an approved court order, one that had been reached over the protracted course of some two years. We have already written extensively on this subject and therefore need not reprise the same in the present column, which is primarily aimed at exposing Mr. Pratt for the veritable charlatan that is the Managing-Editor of the so-called Insight newspaper. He is also a charlatan because Mr. Pratt has been a staunch supporter and a fervid advocate of a political party and an ideological school that espouses and promotes precisely the kind of autocratic recklessness of which the long-disowned self-confessed member of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) erroneously and flagrantly accuses the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of being guilty of. And preying on the short memories of Ghanaians does not work in this instance because Ghanaians have lived through 20 years of deliberately orchestrated lawlessness under both the Rawlings-led junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council and the faux democratically elected regimes of the so-called National Democratic Congress.

Now, the real problem for Mr. Pratt here seems to be the fact that under the watch of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the law seems to be working completely devoid of the kind of wanton ideological biases that prevailed under the watch of the infamous NDC-sponsored regimes. Mr. Pratt also, characteristically and mendaciously, claims that properties worth millions of cedis had been lost in the demolition process. But, of course, the truth and the reality is that extreme care had been taken by the court-backed demolition team to avoid precisely the kind of “Rambo-style” approach to law enforcement that Mr. Pratt snidely accuses the Akufo-Addo Administration of being culpable of when, in fact, the present government is indisputably the most legally disciplined and restrained of all the five democratically elected governments that have ruled the country in its present Fourth-Republican dispensation.

Wherever the order to demolish the judicially sanctioned and proscribed illegal commercial structures on landed property owned by the Ghana Trade Fair Company Limited came from is patently irrelevant. What is relevant to note here is the fact that the law was followed to the letter. As well, it is important to note that the demolition of these illegal structures was not vengefully and arbitrarily done, unlike what prevailed under the Rawlings-led regime of the National Democratic Congress, when major capital-intensive projects, such as hotels, were rampantly and riotously demolished because the owners and proprietors of these economically redeeming projects were widely known to be members and supporters of the extant main opposition New Patriotic Party.

Yes, Mr. Pratt, you better believe it – the law actually works and works evenhandedly under the watch of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. You may not like it, but it is still the law.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
March 26, 2020
E-mail: [email protected]