Did Nunoo-Mensah Kill Major Sam Acquah?

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

As Nana Akomea, the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) communications director, aptly puts it, Brig.-Gen. Joseph Nunoo-Mensah inexcusably insults the intelligence of striking Ghanaian workers, when President John Dramani Mahama's security advisor accuses key operatives of the main opposition party of having furtively instigated such legitimately authorized industrial actions.

"He is making his case worse. It is a huge insult to all the doctors, nurses and others, to say that they don't have a mind of their own; and that they need the NPP to come and tell them they are suffering. This is a huge insult," opined Nana Akomea recently on a radio talk-show (See "NPP Are Behind Strikes, Labor Unrests - Nunoo-Mensah" Adomonline.com/ Ghanaweb.com 10/22/13).

It is also quite obvious that Gen. Nunoo-Mensah believes the New Patriotic Party's key operatives to be singularly responsible for the gross administrative incompetence being so brazenly and wantonly exhibited by the Mahama government. If so, then what the Mahama security chief is actually implying is the immediate and imperative need for his boss to be summarily ousted. It is also not clear what Gen. Nunoo-Mensah means with his braggadocio about him having worked with the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The former self-proclaimed CIA mole does not indicate precisely in what capacity he deputized for Washington in Accra; and also how much money he was paid for his services. We know, for instance, that Gen. Nunoo-Mensah was a key player among the Rawlings posse that criminally overthrew the democratically elected Limann-led People's National Party (PNP). Is Gen. Nunoo-Mensah, therefore, hereby implying that the CIA had a hand in the overthrow of Dr. Hilla (Babini) Limann? And also that the then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings was a CIA pawn sprung up for the perennial and irreparable destruction of Ghana's economy and political culture? The Mahama security capo needs to explain himself more fully.

Then also, what other external intelligence agencies has Gen. Nunoo-Mensah flirted with and/or been employed by and for what purposes and to what effect? Indeed, even as Nana Akomea indicated on Adom-Fm's "Dwaso Nsem" (Market News) program, it would be better for the Mahama lookout to zip up his mouth, since the more talking that he does further complicates his already difficult situation. At any rate, it is inescapably preposterous for anybody to presume that the country's economic problems could be any more worsened than they already are, as Gen. Nunoo-Mensah rather vacuously wants his audiences to believe.

Needless to say, Gen. Nunoo-Mensah was the Ghana Army's chief-of-staff on June 30, 1982, when the three Accra High Court judges were savagely abducted from the sanctuary of their homes and brutally executed on the Bundase Military Range. We must also quickly point out that Gen. Nunoo-Mensah's own cousin, Maj. Sam Acquah, a retired managing-director of the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC), was also executed along with the judges. Is the Mahama chief sentry also claiming that he was privy to these glaring instances of atrocities and may have actually partially authorized the same?

Maybe Gen. Nunoo-Mensah needs to be told that having stood on the ticket of the NPP, in whatever capacity, in 1996 only makes him a woefully disgruntled suspect of raw political envy, and an unreliable witness to the purported shenanigans of his former associates, since he also clearly appears to have lost his electoral bid. In sum, Gen. Nunoo-Mensah is a sore loser who does not want to leave let alone, as it were.

Indeed, if I were President Mahama, I would be deeply troubled to have such a loose cannon on my staff. The man has clearly demonstrated that he is a moral reprobate and a rascal who owes no principled allegiance to any benefactor save himself.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Oct. 22, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
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