One Lesson from June 4th - Part 2

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

1972, as reportedly invoked by Maj. Boakye-Djan, obviously refers to the forcible overthrow of the Busia-led Progress Party (PP) government by then-Col. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. In fact, many students and scholars of postcolonial Ghanaian politics have widely speculated that Maj. Boakye-Djan's main reason for actively participating in the June 4th Uprising, was to revenge the unconstitutional ousting of his fellow Brong clansman by the Asante-descended Col. Acheampong, later Gen. Acheampong. It is also an open secret that Brongs and Asantes, both of which groups are bona fide Akan-descended Ghanaians, are not the best of either kins- and clansfolk or friends.

Such frigid relationship, as has been widely known to exist between Brongs and Asantes, is purely political, with the traditionally dominant Asante being widely known to hold the Brongs in abject contempt. This is the widely held stereotype, we must quickly point out. The reality may be far more complex. I don't remember then and even until Maj. Boakye-Djan was recently quoted to be saying the same, that the unconstitutional ousting of the Busia government was a major reason for the very bloody overthrow of the erstwhile Akuffo-led Supreme Military Council (SMC II).

And on the latter score ought to be promptly pointed out that by June 1979, Gen. Acheampong had been pushed out of the old Osu slave castle by his arch-lieutenant, Gen. F. W. K. Akuffo, in what was then widely described by the national media as a "palace coup" and had been under house-arrest for more than a year. Acheampong, we must also significantly observe, had been dishonorably discharged from the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and had been summarily stripped of all his military titles and honors. He had then been retired to his home village of Trabuom, in the Asante Region, scarcely 30 miles outside the Asante metropolis of Kumasi.

Acheampong's sole crime, in the estimation of the man who ousted him, appears to have been the purported fact of having brought the name and image and reputation of the Ghana Armed Forces into abject disrepute. Acheampong, a passionate Nkrumah partisan, it is significant to point out, had prior to his overthrow, attempted to entrench himself in the seat of governance by organizing a referendum around the jaded and roundly rejected Nkrumaist theme of "Union Government," a barely veiled variation on the faux-socialist ideology of the one-party state in which he had imperiously pronounced himself to be the landslide winner, with some 90-plus-percent of the votes cast.

The latter's striking mirroring of President Nkrumah's 1960 so-called Republican Presidential Election was not lost on those Ghanaian citizens who were old enough to remember. Even so, the decision by the men who ousted Gen. Akuffo to round up the retired "Mr." Acheampong and have him summarily executed by firing squad, at the Teshie Military Range, in Accra, together with Commander Utuka, leader of the Border Guards, visibly shocked many Ghanaian citizens and the rest of the world, including then-US President Ronald Reagan who had earlier interceded on behalf of the yet-to-be-slain uniformed men. It also gave strong credence to the widely held view that Maj. Boakye-Djan may well have been the mastermind behind the AFRC decision to execute the former Gen. Acheampong.

As of whether such decision had anything to do with the fact of Acheampong's being of Asante sub-ethnic descent, and Maj. Boakye-Djan's being of Brong sub-ethnic descent, continues to be hotly debated in some circles. Maj. Boakye-Djan himself has said little or absolutely nothing in this respect. He would rather have his audiences believe that June 4th was fundamentally a patriotic act geared towards the immutable restoration of the country to democratic governance. If the foregoing observation has validity, then it is rather curious that Maj. Boakye-Djan has yet to call for the summary execution of former President Jerry John Rawlings, then a Ghana Airforce flight lieutenant, for unconstitutionally ousting the democratically elected Limann-led government of the People's National Party (PNP) on December 31, 1981.

In the recent past, Maj. Boakye-Djan has been reported to have accused former Chairman Jerry John Rawlings of having flagrantly betrayed the tenets and objectives of June 4th. Ironically, however, Maj. Boakye-Djan has also insisted on his bona fide front-seat membership of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress, on grounds that the P/NDC is the vintage and veritable creation of the AFRC, of whose cabinet he was both the spokesman and pontiff. If this is not an incontrovertibly contradictory stance for him to take, then I really don't know what else is.

Well, about the only thing from the juntas of the AFRC and PNDC that is codified in the 1992 Constitution is the Indemnity Clause, shielding the criminal elements of these political racketeers and scam-artists from the far-reaching arms of justice. Section 12 of the 1960 Criminal Code deals with what Americans call the right of citizen's arrest, that is, the right of any individual or private citizen to apprehend another citizen found to be in breach or violation of any laws of the land, and holding onto such criminal offender or suspect until the arrival of the police or the culprit has been handed over to the appropriate law-enforcement agents.

And Maj. Boakye-Djan would have Ghanaians believe that it was the AFRC that introduced this commonsensical perennial practice into postcolonial Ghanaian political culture? Could have fooled me, royally, Uncle Cudjoe!

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
June 8, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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