Where Was Abodakpi When Kpegah Dissed Akufo-Addo?

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

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign period, when retired Justice Francis Kpegah criminally and publicly impugned the professional credentials and integrity of Nana Akufo-Addo, as well as the right of the latter to practice law in the country, nobody heard a single word of defense from Mr. Dan Abodakpi, the former National Democratic Congress' Member of Parliament for Keta. And so it is rather surprising that Mr. Abodakpi should now be emerging out of the proverbial woodwork and be describing the 2012 New Patriotic Party Presidential Candidate as a professionally astute and upright lawyer who did quite a great job as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice (See "Abodakpi's Claim Against Kufuor 'Very Bizarre' - Frank Agyekum" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/23/14).

Well, Mr. Abodakpi is not just emerging out of the woodwork; he is running for the national chairmanship of the ruling National Democratic Congress. And it well appears that Ghana's former Ambassador to Malaysia has conveniently, and expediently, decided to trot in the name of Nana Akufo-Addo at this time, in order to win some brownie points with his party's delegates. It has been said that one good turn deserves another; and so Mr. Abodakpi would do himself and the rest of us great good by informing the general Ghanaian public just why it has taken this long to apportion credit where it is due, with regard to Nana Akufo-Addo's purported professional evenhandedness as Ghana's Attorney-General.

According to Mr. Abodakpi, while Attorney-General Akufo-Addo had been averse to having the proverbial book - of the law - thrown at him, on charges of causing a financial loss of $400,000 to the State, it was President John Agyekum-Kufuor who summarily overruled his chief state attorney by ordering the prosecution and imposition of a 10-year prison sentence on the former Keta MP.

Mr. Kufuor's spokesman, Mr. Frank Agyekum, has described Mr. Abodakpi's allegation as "very bizarre" but glaringly stops short of convincingly debunking the same. Well, this is what Mr. Kufuor's spokesman had to say to a MyJoyOnline.com reporter: "Nana Akufo-Addo and President Kufuor are astute lawyers who believe that the executive should not intervene in the judiciary and cannot allow such a thing to happen." Needless to say, Mr. Agyekum's riposte woefully begs the question; it does not specifically or frontally answer the question of whether, indeed, President Kufuor summarily and peremptorily overruled his legal right-hand in the Abodakpi case.

If I were Nana Akufo-Addo, I wouldn't wade into this tar-baby kind of conundrum. For if he does, as he had been known to do in the recent past, whatever he says would likely come back to haunt him, especially when the "Kejetia Pit-bulls" come calling in the heat of his party's presidential primary election. And I am quite certain that shooting himself in the foot is the last thing that Nana Akufo-Addo would want to wish on himself in the offing.

We must also, in the name of fairness, point out the fact that Mr. Abodakpi did not serve even a fifth of his 10-year prison sentence before he was generously pardoned by President Kufuor. It is also significant to observe that Mr. Abodakpi is also not claiming not to have committed the crime for which he was duly charged, convicted and sentenced to a slammer term. All he is saying is that his jailer could have been more lenient and considerate; which, by the way, as clearly indicated above, Mr. Kufuor had been, almost to a fault.

_____________________________________________________________
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
June 23, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
###