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

Judgment-Debt investigative judge, Justice Yaw Apau, was recently reported to have removed his goggles in open court and bitterly wept over what he had observed to be the deliberate economic destruction of the country by some cynical politicians and government-salaried attorneys who were supposed to be staunchly defending the fiscal and economic interests of the nation (See "Justice Apau Weeps Over Judgment-Debt Payments" Graphic Online / Ghanaweb.com 4/9/14).

He was further reported to have lamented the depraved tendency of some government lawyers to receiving piddling sums of bribe money and then deliberately failing to show up in court in order to defend the proverbial Ghanaian taxpayer from being literally fleeced by unconscionable scam-artists mischievously posing as aggrieved and honest entrepreneurs. In the process, the country has ended up being robbed of billions of cedis that could have gone into the quite significant development and upgrading of such critical infrastructural amenities as roads, potable piped water and school buildings.

What Justice Apau clearly failed to also add to his litany of bitter complaints is that taxpayer-salaried judges, who are supposed to jealously guard against such anti-social acts of criminality, are often themselves willing collaborators of these robber-barons and their scandalous adjuncts in the Attorney-General's Office. For instance, what prevents these judgment-debt judges from indefinitely adjourning cases for as long as the legal representatives of the state failed to show up to defend the greater moral and material interests of the Ghanaian citizenry at large?

Or better yet, what prevents these judges from issuing subpoenas compelling government lawyers to show up in court to defend the greater public interest? And where deliberate refusal to defend the interests of the nation, on the part of these state attorneys could be credibly established, what prevents our judges from calling for the prompt arrest and vigorous prosecution of these reprobate nation-wreckers?

In other words, our fraud-minded and fraud-prone state attorneys have been able to get away with such criminal instances of grand larceny because our judges have been complict in the commission of such heinous crimes by behaving like some expatriate colonial officials. Then also, Justice Apau needs to frontally address the issue of the astronomical ballooning of judgment-debt payouts, largely as a result of the deliberate delayance of those entrusted with the same. In sum, until these publicly paid officials are made to recognize the egregious errors of their reckless and reprehensible ways, by the swift and severe application of punitive measures, the situation can only be expected to get even worse and very likely out of hand in the near future.

In the meantime, even as the Judgement-Debt Commissioner aptly hinted, the funding culture of the campaigns of our politicians needs to be critically monitored and scrutinized, and possibly periodically audited to ensure leadership accountability. And here also, of course, I am absolutely in no way, whatsoever, calling for the public funding of our politicians. After all, politics is not the play toy of toddlers and teenagers. It is the veritable domain of citizens with proven economic independence and managerial competence, magnanimously poised to selflessly facilitating the relative success of the rest of us less fortunate and materially less-endowed ones.

I am absolutely in no way hereby suggesting that voluntarily supporting our politicians in their bid for public-service power is grossly out of kilter either. What I am clearly observing here is that politics ought to be primarily and essentially about serving the public, not ripping off the same.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
April 11, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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