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

Garden City, New York

October 5, 2014

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

This is a story that makes some Ghanaian political activists sound and epitomize borderline cases of mental retardation. A known flunky of the Chairman of the country's main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Paul Afoko, is reportedly assaulted by a posse of thugs claiming to be protecting the name and integrity of the party's most popular presidential candidacy aspirant, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo; and then the lawyer for the victim, Mr. Emmanuel Darkwah, reportedly calls for police investigators to round up Nana Akufo-Addo for questioning (See "Lawyer Calls for Akufo-Addo's Arrest" Daily Guide 10/1/14).

Meanwhile, the alleged victim, Mr. Ibrahim Atluk, and/or his associates have also accused Hajia Fati Amadu, a well-known New Patriotic Party activist, and Mr. Moses Abbor, the Ayawaso-Central Youth Organizer of the NPP, of having a hand in his allegedly brutal assault. The problem that the plaintiff has here in having his case successfully prosecuted, however, is that he has, so far, not been able to identify his alleged assailants, according to reliable media reports. Neither has Mr. Atluk been able to physically place both Hajia Fati Amadu and Mr. Moses Abbor at the crime scene.

The preceding, however, is in no way to imply that a criminal assault incident did not occur, for Mr. Atluk is widely reported to have sustained physical injuries to at least one of his arms and some other parts of his body. What the story means is that the assault incident may well have been executed by elements having absolutely no substantive relationship with either Nana Akufo-Addo or any of the two well-known Akufo-Addo supporters allegedly fingered by the purported victim of assault.

What I am suggesting here is that it could well have been that the alleged assailants of Mr. Ibrahim Atluk mentioned the name of Nana Akufo-Addo as a tactical feint, or distraction, from the real mastermind and/or sponsor of the alleged brutal assault. This is akin to a Boko Haram or an Al-Qaeda terror mastermind and/or assailant invoking the name of the Venerable Prophet Muhammad, or even Allah, as a means of legitimizing his otherwise patently ungodly criminal misdeed. Would it, therefore, stand to reason for the judge of any legitimately constituted court of law to order Allah or the Prophet Muhammad to show up in court to answer assault charges for a crime whose culprits have yet to be forensically identified as such?

Better yet, what is the legal basis for having Nana Akufo-Addo invited to the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Division/ Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, on the patently flimsy pretext of the alleged assailants of Mr. Ibrahim Atluk having allegedly claimed in the process of the commission of their crime that they were about the business of protecting the name and integrity of the 2008 and 2012 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party? Once again, it bears reminding the reader that even as of this writing, not a single one of the alleged assailants of Mr. Atluk had been identified or even arrested for questioning.

There is another plausible way of looking at the Ibrahim Atluk assault case. And it regards the fact that the incident could well have been hatched and orchestrated by a rival faction among the ranks of the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party, as a means of impugning the credibility and integrity of the party's presumptive presidential candidacy front-runner, with the unmistakable goal and/or purpose of alienating the teeming supporters of Nana Akufo-Addo. In the recent past, scandalous and muck-raking press releases have been published by anti-Akufo-Addo factional insiders mischievously and viciously impersonating at least one well-known staunch supporter of Nana Akufo-Addo.

In other words, the Afoko-Kyerematen-Agyapong faction of the New Patriotic Party is not above engineering such criminal mischief, with the sole objective of irreparably character assassinating Nana Akufo-Addo. I would also not be the least bit surprised if the so-called Lawyer Emmanuel Darkwah, the attorney representing Mr. Ibrahim Atluk, turns out to have been privy to such criminal mischief from the get-go.