...Over Brother's Conduct

Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education and the first and only Minister to have been appointed to the ill-fated and doomed Ministry for Media Relations, is in trouble with President Kufuor.

According to Ghana Palaver sources within the Presidency, on Monday, November 24, 2003, Ms. Ohene was summoned to the Presidency and severely chastised by a stony-faced President Kufuor over a judgement that her brother Emmanuel Ohene, a lawyer in the Chambers of Professor G. K. A. Ofosu-Amaah had taken and executed against the property of Ms. Felicia Kufuor, wife of Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Dua, Minister/Counsellor in charge of Information at the Ghana Embassy in Washington DC.

It is reported that the President’s attack was most vitriolic, tearing into her without restraint and into smithereens.

The wonder of it is that Mr. Emmanuel Ohene managed to obtain the judgement at a time when the presiding judge had been transferred to Tarkwa and a replacement was yet to be appointed. Besides, all the justices together with the Chief Justice were at Winneba for pre-Legal Year opening seminars and workshops.

Of interest and importance for governance purposes and a better appreciation of the chastisement that Ms. Ohene is reported to have received are the background and relationships between the ‘dramatis personae’ in what appears to be a ‘dog bite dog’ politico/judicial brinkmanship game.

Professor G. K. A. Ofosu-Amaah, former Dean of the Legon Law Faculty and member of the Okudzeto Commission which could not find out who were responsible for the deaths of 126 people in the May 9th Stadium Disaster, is the father of the child of Ms. Elizabeth Ohene.

Ms. Ohene used to work at the then Graphic Corporation, recruited at a time when Professor Ofosu-Amaah was the Director of the Special Branch (now BNI), and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Graphic Corporation.

Mr. Emmanuel Ohene, a junior brother of Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, is a lawyer by profession and an avowed disciple of the 31st December Revolution who was the first Chairman of the Citizens’ Vetting Committee (CVC). Following threats to his life in Kumasi, he was transferred to Accra where he was appointed a member of the National Investigations Committee (NIC), working variously under C. O. Lamptey, C. K. Mawuenyega, Sam Awortwi and others.

On the advent of constitutional rule, Mr. Emmanuel Ohene joined the Chambers of the father of his sister’s child, Professor Ofosu-Amaah.

Since the NPP has been in power, Mr. Ohene has been in dangerous sparring with Theophillus Cudjoe for the headship of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Before then, he had gone to the premises of the SFO to physically wrestle power from the then Acting Executive Director, Mr. B. A. Sapati. It was the intervention of then Attorney General Nana Akufo-Addo that nullified Mr. Ohene’s letter of appointment purporting to have been written by then Minister of Presidential Affairs, Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey.

It has long been suspected that it is from Professor Ofosu-Amaah’s Chambers that all the legal strategies and manipulations of the Kufuor administration, including those that went on in the ‘Quality Grains Case’, have emanated from. The grand old Professor has variously been described as "powerful, faceless and heartless".

Ms. Felicia Kufuor, whose property is the subject of the litigation that has created so much problem for poor Elizabeth Ohene is, as earlier stated, the niece of President Kufuor. Her marriage to Ivor Agyeman-Dua must have gotten the latter the plum job of Minister/Counsellor in charge of Information at our Washington DC Embassy.

Confused? Don’t be. It is all part of the "all-inclusive family government" system of President Kufuor. As somebody said, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave".

Meanwhile, Ghana Palaver has learnt that the Chief Justice has called for the docket on the case.