An Arrest Is Not A Conviction, Or Is It?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Oct. 22, 2014

E-mail: [email protected]

Among the Akan, we have a saying that "Onipa 'Mama Ho Ye Ahi," to wit: "Every illustrious/distinguished personality provokes the ire/anger of lesser souls." And so Ghana's foremost opposition leader is apt to continue courting the envy and jealousy of both his internal and external political enemies.

In the latest media nuisance salvo, we have a Ms. Dede Djaba, a London (UK)-resident New Patriotic Party would-be-gold-digger accusing Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of having been once or twice arrested at London's Heathrow Airport "on drug-related offences" (See "Nana Akufo-Addo May Be Disqualified If... - Dede Djaba" Ghanaweb.com 10/22/14).

What is interesting here is that as a seasoned lawyer, at least by her own account, Ms. Djaba ought to be well aware of the fact that unless Nana Akufo-Addo was ever brought up on charges of illegal drug possession and/or usage and duly prosecuted and convicted of the same in a court of law, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) leader cannot in any way, whatsoever, be disqualified from contesting for the job for which he had been democratically nominated twice before in the recent past.

In other words, inveterate "internal" political enemies like Ms. Djaba had better come up with a far more forensically sustainable evidence than simply throwing pot-shots at the man whom she claims to have befriended, and even passionately worked for, in the past. But what is even more intriguing here is that Ms. Djaba had for two protracted decades hung cozy with certified/clinical murderers like Chairman Rawlings, and never once called for the prompt and summary presidential disqualification of the man who, allegedly, illegally expropriated the prime properties of the now-late Mr. George Djaba, Dede's own father, between 1992 and 2000.

It also ought to worry those Akufo-Addo detractors who put Ms. Djaba up to such sordid gimmickry, especially when the frontwoman of their latest character-assassination gambit is glaringly unable to put the purported evidence of her rather boorish allegations into the public domain. For, needless to say, such flagrant act of rhetorical vacuity tells the public more about the reprehensible character of the defamer and her cowardly sponsors than the subject of such act of criminal defamation.

It also insults the intelligence of the entire key party operatives and the rank-and-file membership of the New Patriotic Party at large. The real question here, though, is clearly as follows: If Ms. Djaba meant both the New Patriotic Party and the country so well, why has an ace legal practitioner of her much-vaunted standing waited so long until now to make her allegations?

What party leaders need to do at this juncture is to call for the medical records and an expert psychological profile of the accuser to be put into the public domain, if this nihilistic pro-NDC direction is where, indeed, Ms. Djaba intends to take both the NPP and the suffering Ghanaian masses. Then also, I am in no mean way intrigued by Ms. Djaba's allegation of Nana Akufo-Addo's "free-basing" on narcotic contrabands whenever the latter tours the United States, Britain and other European capitals.

For an allegedly pathological drug addict, one would also have expected Nana Akufo-Addo to be equally heavily engaged in drug abuse at home, in Ghana, where he has been gunning for the presidency for sometime now.

It is, indeed, a clear sign of clinical dementia when your accuser demands that you publicly deny and/or refute allegations for which your accuser has provided absolutely no forensically credible and/or sustainable evidence.

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