Kweku Baako Is Wrong: Kwabena “Amedeka” Adjei Is Capable Of Killing Our Judges!

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

Inasmuch as he may be quite familiar with the man and/or even fast friends with him, it still eerily stands that, contrary to what the Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of the New Crusading Guide would have his audience believe, in fact, the National Chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) is more than capable of scheming, in his official capacity as party honcho, to facilitate the summary liquidation of Ghanaian judges whose rulings, or verdicts, may be perceived to be hostile to the prosecutorial agenda of the NDC.

The obvious evidence here, of course, is the June 30, 1982 brutal assassination of the three Supreme Court judges – Koranteng-Addow, Sarkodie and Agyepong – regarding which forensic evidence later eloquently contradicted then-Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings, after the latter, in a badly rehearsed melodramatic simulcast, had vehemently denied any personal or governmental involvement in the same (See “Kwabena ‘Amedeka’ Adjei Threatens Open Season on Ghanaian Judges” Modernghana.com 8/19/10).
If, indeed, Mr. Baako can be so certain that the chairman of the most extortionate and sanguinary regime in recent Ghanaian history is too well-intentioned for his reckless use of incendiary language to signify anything dire, then why does the same apologist find it necessary to tell his audience, within the same breath, that Dr. Kwabena “Amedeka” Adjei’s clearly life-threatening warning to Chief Justice Georgina Wood, and other judges who have rendered decisions regarded as hostile by the Atta-Mills government, would be “cleaned out” of the judicial system, could well “[provoke] passions and get some people who want their own form of justice to do so in a way that could put the lives of the members of the judiciary into [sic] jeopardy”? (See “Kwabena Adjei Is Incapable Of Killing Our Judges But….- Kweku Baako” Modernghana.com 8/19/10).
What is also quite interesting is the apparently tentative initial reaction of the Atta-Mills government to the NDC chairman’s anti-judicial remark. In the immediate wake of the latter, it may be recalled, the ever-predictable Deputy Minister for Information, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, who also doubles as the NDC Propaganda Secretary these days (it is not clear what Mr. Richard Quarshigah is up to these days), issued a statement categorically observing that, indeed, Dr. Kwabena “Amedeka” Adjei was speaking on behalf of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the ruling party, and not as a cabinet member of the Atta-Mills government.
Less than twenty-four hours later, however, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would be back on the airwaves cavalierly advising his critics not to link Dr. “Amedeka” Adjei’s remark to the slain high court judges. As to how the deputy Information minister came by such temerity has yet to be clarified, in view of the fact that at 29 years old, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa was barely a year old, in 1982, when Justices Koranteng-Addow, Sarkodie and Agyepong were brutally assassinated by the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).
The preceding clearly points to the fact of both the NDC and the Atta-Mills government hiding something from Ghanaians at large. In other words, the government may well have mischievously used the party chairman to prosecute its putative agenda of intimidating the judiciary into toeing the official line. Unfortunately, once this tactical approach backfired, the government went into a panic, thus Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa’s knee-jerk attempt to categorically distance as well as differentiate the government’s stance from the party line.
But that the party boss could provoke the kind of national outrage sparked by Dr. “Amedeka” Adjei’s anti-judicial remark, simply vindicates the stance of those critics who have been claiming that the Atta-Mills government woefully lacks the sort of discipline required to effectively govern the country. Under the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, the NPP, as the ruling party, was widely considered to be too weak to have its agenda studiously recognized, let alone collaboratively pursued, by the executive; and now in the era of the Atta-Mills government, it is the NDC, as the ruling party, that seems to be calling the shots. Needless to say, in the best of political climates, it is the Kufuor-led NPP that may be aptly deemed to have remarkably appreciated what it means to be a ruling party vis-à-vis the execute mandate, as clearly articulated in our Fourth-Republican Constitution.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 21 books, including “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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