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

My very busy academic and familial schedule took me awhile to get around to reading the patently jaundiced press statement released by Mr. Francis Yaonasu Kpegah, former Supreme Court judge, in which the Rawlings appointee intemperately accuses the 2012 presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, of professional impersonation in the very legal practice in which the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice has enviably distinguished himself for some 42 years now ( See "Akufo-Addo Should Come Face Me In Court - Justice Kpegah" JoyOnline.com/ Ghanaweb.com 3/27/13).

What makes Mr. Kpegah's gauntlet rather pathetic is the fact that his press statement is littered with very rudimentary grammatical errors, largely involving subject-verb disagreement, which one would ordinarily not expect of a man who once proudly acted as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana. Indeed, so annoyingly have I come to accept such abjectly unacademic usage of English grammar from him that, for a moment, I came dangerously close to chucking a printout copy of Mr. Kpegah's press release into my waste-paper shredder.

And here, also, must be recalled the embarrassingly desultory letter which Nana Akufo-Addo's arch-nemesis once penned and published in the national media, shortly after angrily vacating his seat on the Supreme Court. In the said letter, the Hohoe-born Mr. Kpegah caustically lambasted the erstwhile Mills-Mahama government of the National Democratic Congress for having flagrantly betrayed his trust, after he, Mr. Kpegah, had spent his 15 years on the highest court of the land primarily and almost exclusively promoting the especial interests of Chairman Rawlings and those of the NDC at large.

Needless to say, what the foregoing clearly points to, of course, is the fact that Mr. Kpegah's judicial service had been anything but impeccably professional. And so it is absolutely no wonder that now, even in the comfort of retirement, Mr. Kpegah would be rabidly doing the bidding of his former sponsors and paymasters. Indeed, throughout the three-and-half years that the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills held the reins of governance, Mr. Kpegah never ceased to invidiously remind the former than rather than appointing political novices like Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, President Mills ought to have generously rewarded himself with far better value for the public dole had he, Mr. Kpegah, been appointed to the cabinet instead.

In essence, Mr. Kpegah is an irredeemably disgruntled old man who feels woefully cheated out of his destiny, and therefore finds almost every successful Ghanaian male citizen who appears to have achieved relatively far more in life than he, Mr. Kpegah, has to be a prime target of both his ire and abuse. We see this poignantly depicted in his anti-Akufo-Addo press release, in which the former beneficiary and graduate of the Danquah Academy, otherwise known as the University of Ghana, rather cheaply and shamefully seeks to portray Ghana's former Foreign Minister, under the Kufuor administration, as a man born with a diamond spoon in his mouth, whereas he, Mr. Kpegah, had desperately struggled all his life to secure his Rawlings-gifted former seat on the august Supreme Court of Ghana.

Indeed, the Akufo-Addo accuser clearly knows that his "impersonation" suit is thoroughly devoid of merit, which is why he also cynically and deviously resorts to gratuitously blaming one of Ghana's foremost trial lawyers for the alleged death of an unnamed individual whose corpse was reportedly discovered on the premises of Nana Akufo-Addo's legal practice. Mr. Kpegah, implicitly, claims that were a DNA test to be conducted on the mortal remains of the afore-referenced decedent individual, fool-proof criminal culpability would definitely finger Nana Akufo-Addo.

Now, the preceding is a very serious charge, indeed; still, considering that Mr. Kpegah clearly appears to be far off his rockers, as it were, it would be very difficult, if not virtually impossible, for any such an investigation to be duly conducted without first subjecting the accuser to a comprehensive psychiatric examination.

But that in falsely seeking to tarnish the image of Nana Akufo-Addo, as well as that of the late Chief Justice Edward Akufo-Addo, former President of Ghana's Second Republic and father of the accused, Mr. Kpegah intends to "replicate" an Ali-Foreman type of "Thriller in Manila," ought to eloquently inform the well-meaning Ghanaian public that, indeed, all may not be well underneath the balding skull of Mr. Kpegah!

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

Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York March 28, 2013 ###