Serves You Right, David Agbenu!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 9, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

I read the news about the roughing up of Ghanaian Times' photojournalist Mr. Edem Mensah Tsotorme with knowing amusement (See "Nayele Coke Saga: GJA Condemns Attack On Photojournalist" Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/9/14). I read it with "knowing amusement," because I knew that it was only a matter of time before Mr. Agbenu, the editor of the Ghanaian Times, recovered the use of his gumption over his rather expediently irrational decision to impugn the decision of the executive operatives of the Daily Graphic to fire Mr. Daniel Kenu, the Asante Regional Editor of the latter paper.

Mr. Kenu, it may be recalled, had literally played what amounted to an April Fool's prank on his bosses by taking them on a wild-goose chase, as Americans are wont to say. And that wild-goose chase, of course, was the patently lame decision to abruptly and unceremoniously withdraw his lawsuit against Baffuor Gyan, the elder brother of Black Stars' skipper Mr. Asamoah Gyan. Baffuor Gyan, it may be recalled, had sicced a posse of paid thugs on Mr. Kenu, because the former Asante Regional Editor of the Daily Graphic had dared to question the elder Gyan brother about the murky circumstances under which the popular Hiplife musician, Castro, and his girlfriend had reportedly drowned in the estuary of the Volta River near Ada. (As of this writing, the Board of Directors/Trustees of Graphic Communications had, reportedly, called for the immediate reinstatement of Mr. Kenu).

The Castro question might understandably have annoyed Mr. Baffuor Gyan, but it is equally pertinent to observe that Mr. Kenu was legitimately going about his professional duties as a journalist and a reporter when he posed this allegedly annoying question to Baffuor Gyan. Well, as I noted in the wake of Mr. Kenu's patently unwise decision to withdraw his physical assault suit against Baffuor Gyan and his posse of criminal vigilantes, the suit would have opportunely served as a test case against the apparently open season of wanton mauling of Ghanaian journalists and reporters by the filthy rich and powerful. It would also have sent the sort of strong deterrent signal that rich and disdainful bullies like Mr. Baffuor Gyan need to stop them in their tracks and/or force them to think twice, or even thrice, before presuming to take the lives and safety of media operatives like Mr. Kenu for granted.

In sum, withdrawing his case meant that Mr. Kenu, like the Gyan Brothers and their thuggish hirelings, had absolutely no respect for his media profession and, in fact, his very life! This is what psychologists and sociologists call "low self-esteem." In other words, in abruptly and capriciously withdrawing his suit against Baffuor Gyan, Mr. Kenu had also shamefully demonstrated that Ghanaian journalists could be cheaply bought out of their conscience and their right to justice and decent treatment. And it was pretty much the preceding abject lack of principles and decency on the part of Mr. Kenu, as well as the equally scandalous decision by Mr. Agbenu to support Mr. Kenu in his scandalously myopic and self-centered decision to withdraw his lawsuit against Baffuor Gyan and his thuggish associates that made it a matter of course for Mr. Tsotorme, the Ghanaian Times photojournalist, to be so brutally and wantonly assaulted by the gang of Nayele Ametefe-supporting thugs that reportedly visited a KENUTIAN slugfest against Mr. Agbenu's staff lieutenant.

And then also, isn't it rather absurd for the Ghanaian Times' editor to blame on-site police officers for failing to arrest the alleged assailants of Mr. Tsotorme? Why should the police officers who, reportedly, rescued Mr. Tsotorme from his assailants have arrested these thugs, if the end result was apt to replicate the Kenu-minted wolf-crying April Fool's suit withdrawal? Well, the worst may be just yet to come. You just mark it on the wall of your Facebook or your mind's eye.

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