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

I have read the news report in which a group calling itself the Network of Social Democrats (NESOD) has given Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood a 14-day ultimatum to resign “or be pushed through the narrow window” and find it to be extremely disturbing, and that is only to say the least (See “We Won’t Harm The Chief Justice, We [Just] Want Her Out” Peacefmonline.com 6/28/11).

Precisely what makes this Al-Qaeda-like network of urchins believe that it has any constitutional right to push the Chief Justice out of the position and status she has worked all her life to attain, beats my imagination. But then, don’t we all live in a country in which three extremely talented high court judges were abducted from the sanctuary of their homes and brutally executed, Mafia-style, by cabinet members of the erstwhile Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC)?

In other words, our contention here is that the members of the so-called Network of Social Democrats have the bizarre and flagrant example of Mr. Rawlings and his lackeys to guide them. And on the latter score must also be recalled the fact that the key to the so-called Black Maria truck that was used in transporting Justices Koranteng-Addow, Sarkodie and Agyepong to their Kutunse execution site was collected from the kitchen table of the Rawlingses, with at least the evidentiary knowledge of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the woman who wants her husband’s old job to be handed to her on a diamond-gilt platter come Election 2012 (See The SIB Report).

Anyway, this is what the leader of the group, Mr. Rudolf [Adolf?] Awuankua told police investigators in Accra recently: “We have said nothing dangerous, nothing that implies that we are going to cause physical harm to the Chief Justice. We did state that the Chief Justice must exit through the broad door in 14 days[,] which implies that she should resign or be pushed out through the narrow window, which implies taking constitutional measures to get her out of office. It was only metaphorical.”

Well, for your information, Mr. Awuankua, I have been teaching both high school- and college-level English for some twenty-seven years. I don’t know how old you are right now – not that I give a whit, anyhow – but I never heard of anybody hurling such bald-pate threat at the Chief Justice of any civilized country in the name of metaphorical benignity. And if you, sincerely, believe that criminally attempting to run Mrs. Wood off the job which, by the way, she entered by the “narrow window” when you were, perhaps, not even born does not amount to the issuance of a threat, then, you definitely need to be tested for the use of illegal drugs.

Indeed, I had hoped, when I first came across news headlines reporting the threat on the person and profession of Justice Wood, that officials from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), rather than the Ghana Police Service, would be assigned to the case, gauging from the extremely high level of such threat. Now, I am seriously thinking that, perhaps, the FBI ought to be promptly invited by the Mills-Mahama government of the so-called National Democratic Congress to take over the case.

Indeed, if the members of the so-called Network of Social Democrats meant no physical or bodily harm to Chief Justice Wood, they would have gone to court to file any charges of impropriety they deemed to disqualify Mrs. Wood from continuing to hold herself up as Ghana’s chief judicial officer. Needless to say, the very violent and threatening nature of the language used by the members of NESOD clearly implies their criminal intentions.

We also strikingly recognize the close resemblance in tactics, tone of language and group name between the Network of Social Democrats and the ruling National Democratic Congress, and would not be the least bit surprised if NESOD turns out to be just another morbid definition of Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah’s idea of “NDC Heroism.” And on the latter score, may we sternly caution the Mills-Mahama government that if any suspicious act of harm befalls the Chief Justice and her family, as well as her judicial associates, no amount of presidential speechifying, as then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings staged in the wake of the June 30, 1982 judicial assassinations, would hold the Ghanaian citizenry at peace and quiet.

*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 author of twenty-two books, including “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###