What Kind of Development?

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

It is about time that Ghanaians frontally and candidly faced the fact that what currently prevails in the country, and has prevailed from some 30 years, is a "prolonged truce," not peace. It is a patently bizarre situation in which the bulk of the country's hardworking poor and middle-class have been viciously hoodwinked into acquiescent quietude, while corrupt and criminally minded politicians fleece the country's economy with reckless abandon.

And so it is rather insulting for the Upper-East Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to be preaching a vacuous peace to Ghanaians in the age of GYEEDA, Judgment Debts and Woyome. If this is what Mr. Pontius Pilate Apaabey Baba means by a healthy development in a peaceful environment, then Ghanaians are the most to be pitied among the comity of sovereign democracies around the world (See "NCCE Urges Ghanaians to Accept SC Verdict" Ghana News Agency/Ghanaweb.com 9/1/13).

Indeed, if Mr. Apaabey Baba really wants to know this, the 2012 election dispute and the travesty that was the decision of the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court, have convinced most levelheaded and patriotic Ghanaians that the caliber of judges sitting on the highest court of the land leaves much to be desired. The cause of the problem, however, is not very difficult to pinpoint and promptly redress. It is simply that too many mediocre lawyers - of the Kpegah type - have been appointed to sit on the Supreme Bench by the cynical cabal of Anlo-Ewe leaders who dominate the top-echelons of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Then also, the ethnic-cleansing of the court by Mr. Rawlings and the two most notorious Tsikata cousins continues to have deleterious effects on the way that justice is administered in the country. The eerily symbolic presence at the recently concluded Election 2012 Presidential Petition by the Anlo-Ewe Butcher of Keta, Capt. (Rt.) Kojo Tsikata, was obviously meant to instill fear into the 9 judges who sat on the case. The very narrow ruling (5-4) in the clearly criminal exposure of President John Dramani Mahama and Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the Electoral Commissioner, ought to soberly inform Ghanaians that the judicial system, the symbolic and practical representation of the Conscience-of-the-Nation, has been effectively nullified to cater to the interests of the rabidly anti-Akan Trokosi Nationalists who spearheaded both the AFRC and PNDC "revolutions."

Needless to say, these so-called House-Cleaning Exercises were primarily meant to criminally impose the political will of the country's ethnic minorities on the diligent, ingenious and well-meaning Akan majority. This epic and apocalyptic evil shall not stand! Unlike the Upper-East Regional Director of the NCCE, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that for Ghana, and Ghanaians, to work harmoniously and efficiently as a nation, the 1992 Republican Constitution needs to be thoroughly overhauled.

The open-ended - or temporally indefinite - period afforded the Supreme Court in dealing with election disputes, such as arose in December 2012, gives undue wiggle room for mischievous politicians like Mr. Mahama and his henchmen and hirelings to flagrantly undermine the sovereign will and mandate of the people. Such disputes as may arise also need to be resolved before any of the disputants could be sworn in as President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana. In sum, the patently unwise swearing in of Mr. Mahama before the latter's electoral credibility could be firmly established, may well have significantly prejudiced the Supreme Court verdict.

__________________________________________________________ *Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York Sept. 1, 2013 E-mail: [email protected] ###