I Am Not Surprised By Goaso

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
June 11, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

The media report that a magistrate in Goaso, in the Brong-Ahafo Region, has asked for the two top administrators of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to be investigated, hardly comes as any surprise (See "Court Wants Afoko; Agyepong Investigated" Daily Guide / Ghanaweb.com 6/8/15). In the wake of last month's acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the Upper-East NPP regional chairman, I made a similar call, primarily based on the fact of the circumstantial events leading to the murder of Mr. Mahama, including the arrest of Mr. Gregory Afoko, the younger brother of Mr. Paul Afoko, the NPP's national chairman.

For those of our readers who may not remember this, the possible incriminating evidence against Mr. Paul Afoko is not merely the fact that his younger brother, the 50-year-old Mr. Gregory Afoko, has been arrested and charged with being one of the killers of Mr. Adams Mahama, but significantly because Mr. Paul Afoko had publicly copped an alibi for his brother Gregory, by claiming the latter to have been fast asleep at the time of the commission of the crime. The NPP National Chairman would further claim that the motorcycle by which use his brother could have murdered Mr. Mahama had been discovered by Bolgatanga police investigators to have been ice-cold to the touch, when they visited the home of Brother Gregory, described by some media reports as a farmer.

That the aforesaid alibi did not pass muster makes the NPP Chairman's voluntary public testimony all the more suspicious and complicit in the alleged act of criminality on the part of Mr. Gregory Afoko, who is presently in the custody of the police and stands charged with the brutal murder of Mr. Adams Mahama. What is more, both Messrs. Afoko and Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, the NPP general-secretary, have not made any convincing public statements indicating their innocence in the murder of Mr. Mahama. Indeed, Mr. Agyepong has only further complicated matters by obliquely suggesting the deceased Upper-East NPP Chairman to have been a very violent man who literally deserved his brutal assassination. For his part, the NPP National Chairman has not even attempted to address this most heinous act of criminality, except to rather scandalously assert that he would lead the New Patriotic Party to an electoral landslide in the 2016 general electon as a means of shaming his enemies, almost as if a mere electoral vitory settles the need to finding and vigorously prosecuting the killers and colluders in the brutal murder of Mr. Adams Mahama. Nothing could more morally and politically insensitive.

In the case of Goaso, Magistrate Kwaku Twumasi has ordered an investigation into the possibly attempted assassination of the NPP-Member of Parliament for the Asunafo-North Constituency, which includes Goaso, Mr. Robert Sarfo-Mensah. Well, the media reports get a bit conflicting and complicated here because on the one hand the criminal convict, Mr. Abubakar Wahab, already sentenced to a fine of GHC 4,000 or in default a two-year jail term, stands accused of both attempted assassination and undue and illegal interference in the local politics of the Goaso district. In the latter instance, Mr. Wahab is alleged to have conducted an opinion poll as a means of determining whether the incumbent MP of the aforesaid constituency could be defeated by a challenger who appears to be sponsored by Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong. We learn from media reports that at the time of his sentencing, Mr. Wahab had asked to directly address Magistrate Twumasi, at which moment the criminal convict had confessed to having directly communicated with Mr. Agyepong and also faulting the latter for having plunged Mr. Wahab into such Stygian mess.

As I previously stated, there may well exist a nationwide Mafia network established and operated by Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong. And this is why I have counseled the NPP leadership to suspend these two men from office until police investigations into the Mahama case, and now the Goaso assassination attempt and political manipulation attempt cases, has been brought to a definitive closure. We must also, here again, observe that already the Executive Committees of seven out of the country's ten regions have passed a resounding vote-of-no-confidence on the stewardship of Messrs. Afoko and Agyepong. The voice of the people, it has long and often been said, is also the Voice of God. We hope the New Patriotic Party leadership is paying sedulous attention.

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