Misguided Acts of Conciliation

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

I read Mr. Kufuor Appiah-Danquah or is it Mr. Appiah-Danquah Kufuor’s article titled “Mr. President Pardon Tsatsu Tsikata” with indescribable disgust and horror. And I came away from the article fully convinced that the writer either has absolutely no sense of nationhood or he likely benefited greatly from the untold atrocities perpetrated by the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) against Ghanaians for some twenty protracted years.

What equally disgusted me was the disingenuous attempt by the writer to capitalize on his evidently consanguineous – or blood – relationship to President John Agyekum-Kufuor in order to both summarily abort as well as flagrantly preempt the Ghanaian judicial system.

First of all, had Mr. Appiah-Danquah Kufuor been studiously watching his uncle, the President, he would have since long noticed that the last time that the former Atwima-Nwabiagya Popular-Front Party (PFP) parliamentary representative (MP) tinkered with our country’s judicial administration, he nearly brought the entire country to the brink of chaos. It also did not help matters to vividly recall the fact that Mr. Agyekum-Kufuor had been a bona fide cabinet member of the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) on June 30, 1982, when the three Ghanaian Supreme Court judges and the retired Army major were criminally abducted, allegedly, on the orders of Messrs. Rawlings and Tsikata (Capt. Kojo Tsikata, that is) and summarily executed, Mafia style. And on the latter score must also be observed the well-known fact that Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata had masterminded the brutal and criminal reconstruction of the Ghanaian judicial system into the neo-fascist system of the clinically methodical Public Tribunals that facilitated the wanton denial of justice and summary execution of tens of hundreds of otherwise law-abiding Ghanaian citizens.

Regarding President Kufuor’s rather unfortunate and pointedly infelicitous tampering with the Ghanaian judicial system, the most glaring example is the Abodakpi case, in which the duly convicted and sentenced former NDC-Member of Parliament for Keta, Mr. Dan K. Abodakpi, was mercifully proffered early release from a 10-year prison term. The latter had been found guilty of willfully causing grievous financial loss to the state. The upshot of it all is that President Kufuor had pardoned the former Keta NDC-MP in the, admittedly, laudable name of National Reconciliation.

Ironically, however, Mr. Abodakpi, who had curiously convinced himself that he was innocent, grossly misinterpreted the President’s purely kindly gesture to imply Mr. Abodakpi’s clinical judicial vindication. And before anybody could say “Do be very careful next time,” the man was back in our National Assembly edifice raucously celebrating his “executive vindication” with his jolly and reprobate cohorts of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Earlier on, the rest of the 94 NDC-MPs had summarily boycotted parliamentary proceedings in the wake of the conviction and sentencing of Mr. Abodakpi for nearly two weeks and gotten fully paid their salaries for willfully and seditiously shirking the crucial affairs of the nation.

What is significant about the Abodakpi case inheres in the fact that the pardoner and recipient of pardon had been on two different wavelengths or at cross-purposes. President Kufuor had executed his noble and kindly gesture in the laudable name of National Reconciliation; however, as events soon panned out, there had been, in reality, nobody with whom to reconcile. Maybe the Kufuor-Abodakpi or Abodakpi-Kufuor faux-pas had something to do with the kind of “cross-talk” that occurs when two people are foreign to each other’s native tongue. Perhaps the word “Reconciliation,” upon which President Kufuor placidly predicated his pardon of Mr. Abodakpi, does not exist in the Ewe language of the latter, else such purely humanitarian executive gesture, on the part of President Kufuor, would not have been woefully and grossly been misrepresented by Mr. Abodakpi.

Needless to say, a strikingly similar pattern is at stake in the Tsikata case. The convict, a former managing-director of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and a lawyer by training, has arrogantly and cavalierly insisted for more than six years that he has done nothing wrong, even though as Mr. Kufuor Appiah-Danquah, himself, maintains, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata “made the [egregious] mistake of investing the proceeds of GNPC [business activities] into Valley Farms [the business enterprise of his friends and associates] and therefore [is as] guilty as charged” (Ghanaweb.com 9/22/08).

The problem here, however, is that, as already noted, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata does not even half-believe that he is “as guilty as charged,” as Mr. Kufuor Appiah-Danquah is claiming in his article. And, needless to say, should the occasion present itself, as it were, Mr. Tsikata may likely sue his unsolicited advocate for the actionable charge of character assassination. Needless to wistfully say, the three Supreme Court judges never got it this easy.

Matters have also not been meliorated by the fact that Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, the presidential candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and immediate former Vice-President of our Republic, has made the immediate release of Mr. Tsikata from prison the topmost agenda of his Election 2008 campaign. The former University of Ghana law school professor has even gone on record as insisting that rather than be legally incarcerated for willful managerial criminality, Mr. Tsikata ought to be conferred with Ghana’s highest national civilian award.

On a more serious note, however, what is at stake here is the very conscience and soul of the nation. For, the strength, vitality and authenticity of any modern nation-state inhere in its judicial culture. And any “bleeding-hearted” attempt to either vitiate or abort the efficient administration, or functioning, of our judicial system, perforce, implies the legal proscription of Ghana as a viable nation-state. In sum, what Mr. Appiah-Danquah Kufuor is inadvertently advocating here is the summary abrogation of the Ghanaian state for the sake of a duly convicted criminal by the name of Tsatsu Tsikata. This must not be countenanced under any circumstances; for, needless to say, Ghana is too dear and precious to dismantle for the sake of one ugly man, and a man who hardly ranks among the most morally upright of our citizenry.

While, indeed, it is quite noble not to attempt to politicize everything Ghanaian, as Mr. Kufuor Appiah-Danquah aptly maintains, with Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata everything is inescapably political. And I hope to the high heavens that the former’s name of “Danquah” has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with Nana Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye-Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics, because every year, for quite a considerable while now, Mr. Tsikata gathers with his fanatical comrades of the so-called Ghana Socialist League to celebrate the prison assassination of Dr. J. B. Danquah by President Kwame Nkrumah. Mr. Tsikata appears to be fully convinced that but for his “auspicious” extra-judicial liquidation by Ghana’s first prime minister (see my article titled “The Foolish Pride of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata” Newtimesonline 3/5/06), Dr. Danquah would not have amounted to even small fry in postcolonial Ghanaian affairs.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 18 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Reena: Letters to an Indian-American Gal” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].