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Opinions of Wednesday, 23 April 2014

Columnist: Mohammed, Mikdad

When the law makes no sense-- law & domestic wisdom!

A politician flouts the law, he is tried and jailed BUT on getting to Nsawam, his "sickness comes" and he is rushed to KORLE-BU or 37 Military Hospital. From KORLE-BU or 37, he goes straight back home, having either secured a presidential pardon or a "fake" bail on health grounds, to go and enjoy his loot ''peacefully''. Sometimes the politician even organizes a "small" Press confab in his private residence to tell the world about how "justice has been served" and how he has been "vindicated"! If you think I am lying, ask Adamu Dramani Sakande! He didnt steal money though.

I feel very disappointed in the "law" that frees the "bigmen" as soon as they get to Nsawam Prisons- am wondering: What is there in Nsawam that inflates the Hernia of the politician but nourishes the health of all other categories of prisoners? On 10th October 1960, when Nsawam Prisons received its first in-mates, Dr Kwame Nkrumah made it clear that the Prison was not going to be a home for our nations petty thieves only, or fraudsters, or debt defaulters and bullys but for people like Woyome or Opusika (listen to his name) Aggudey, and their likes almost as if Nkrumah anticipated the birth of crooks and national armed robbery syndicates.

Last week, an Accra court sentenced Mr Aggudey to 10years in prison for non-payment of his workers' SSNIT contributions for donkey years totalling millions of Ghana cedis. He is at home on bail as I write...eating 3 triangular meals and grasscutter light soup. I settled on light soup because his lawyers claim he is sick. Nkrumah prophesied that people like these will emerge in Ghana and we should be ready to imprison them because they can craftily act sick more than Akrobeto & John Dumelo combined. Within the very same week, The Nkoranza Circuit Court also jailed a 21 year old Adjei to 15 years imprisonment for stealing his neighbour's sony ericsson mobile phone valued at 150 Cedis. Clap for Ghana! Our courts and their sentencing policy!

Now, I was in Nsawam Government hospital once to visit a sick relative and chanced upon a very, very sick prisoner who was under extremely painful conditions. A very elderly man whose crime I know not, but even if murder, cannot be equated to the financial Woyomic genocide Alfred Agbeshie and his thieving syndicates subjected us to.The man's hand should not have been one-wrist handcuffed to a queer hospital bed in that condition. Is it only the politicians who deserve acquittal on health grounds?

Follow me: Tsatsu Tsikata's asthma "came" in Nsawam, Adamu Sakande's "NKUI"-if you know what "nkui" means-also "came" only when he was taken to Prison. Some politicians dont act sick, they just sprinkle some political gunpowder on their judgement sheets and presto, you have a "FREE so- so and so movement! If the law did not free you, who should free them? Dan Abodakpi is one such example! Tsatsu Tsikata too! Typically, Ghanaians do not criticize the dead even if such individuals were cantankerous and would not have a single monument, or any miserable grandchild named after them, so I wont mention some dead men. May their souls rest perfectly in the bosom of the Lord, in accountability! Please let us be fair here; what about those jailed for an average of 5-15 years for stealing (some with a value of less than 50 ghana cedis), mobile phones, malt bottles, ECG cables( as if ECG puts the cables to any proper use), goats, scrabs and very recently cassava? Are we not the same people advocating for a judicial system that is firm, proactive, and unbiased? A court of Law that awards Johnson Asiedu Nketiah more damage in defamation than it awards another citizen it imprisons for 14 years wrongly... this is a court I can only reserve my comments on. A nation that knows how to imprison a citizen for 14 solid years but does not know how to wipe his tears. That nation is not a good mother. BUT THAT IS NOT MY BEEF-- my problem is that what is good for the goose(politicians) is good for the gander(the average people).

--- ALL THE ABOVE IS MY VERY IGNORANT OPINION--YOU'RE FREEE TO DISAGREE... Thank you. MIKDAD MOHAMMED.

Originally written on 28th September, 2013. Edited, 21st April 2014--- 0244599591