Attorney-General Amidu Ought to be Commended

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

In the latest fallout from the Woyome/Gorgormi saga, in which the Mills-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) made a fraudulent judgment payout of ¢58 million to a major financier of the ruling party, we have operatives of “government-rented” newspapers attempting to stampede Attorney-General Martin Amidu from his job. So far, the government’s chief lawyer has adamantly refused to resign his post. And for boldly resisting the forces of fraud and corruption, Mr. Amidu ought to be unreservedly commended. It is also rather pathetic that some members from the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) hastily called for either the resignation or outright dismissal of Mr. Amidu.

In the main, those calling for either the resignation of the Attorney-General or his summary removal by the President, predicate their reason on the fact that Mr. Amidu recently observed boldly and publicly that among top party operatives attempting to cover up the Woyome/Gorgormi scandal, is a prominent member of the Mills cabinet. This prompted several notable politicians from both the ruling National Democratic Congress and the main opposition New Patriotic Party to call on the Attorney-General to name names, as it were.

For his part, the National Chairman of the NPP, Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, called on President John Evans Atta-Mills to promptly take the Attorney-General up on his highly forensically sustainable allegation (See “Act on A-G’s ‘Gargantuan Crimes’ Allegation, Jake Tells Mills” JoyOnline.com 1/16/12). So far, neither the President nor his office has issued any statement indicating his next line of action. And on the latter score must also be promptly noted that during the last couple of days, as of this writing (1/16/12), President Mills had been widely reported by the Ghanaian media to be heavily leaning on the Attorney-General in a bid to getting him to tender his resignation. So far, however, Mr. Amidu has vehemently indicated that not only is he not ready to be pushed off a job to which he had not begged President Mills to appoint him, to begin with but, even more significantly, that he intended to stay in office in order to see to the successful prosecution of the Woyome/Gorgormi case. About the only remarkable faux-pas that Mr. Amidu committed was in unduly waiting for the hitherto apparently well-lidded scandal to explode into the open before coming forth with his rather flabbergasting accusation of a cabinet member having been vigorously and criminally attempting to cover up the Woyome caper. The Attorney-General also appears to have initially failed or flatly refused to challenge the Woyome/Gorgormi bilking of the State of Ghana and, in effect, the Ghanaian taxpayer because, somehow, without even thoroughly investigating the matter, Mr. Amidu appears to have curiously and bizarrely concluded that the government had no viable case. Needless to say, it is primarily for this reason that I decided to use the mild auxiliary verb of “ought” in the caption of this article, rather than the more imperative auxiliary verbal alternative of “must.” But, of course, it is duly recognized herein that the Attorney-General is as human and fallible as the rest of us; as even the best amongst us.

What needs to be also promptly recognized here is the fact that historically, the Rawlings-founded Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) is veritably a hardnosed political juggernaut that operates strikingly like a Sicilian-Mafia organization, with all the bloody trappings and accoutrements of a bona fide terrorist organization. And it is precisely this reason why those who are calling for the resignation of the Attorney-General may either wittingly or unwittingly be imposing a death sentence on the man. In essence, what I am driving at here is that with any reputable Mafia establishment, such as the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), once a member or cell captain in good standing, such as Attorney-General Amidu, steps out of the loop and out of line, he immediately becomes designated as “a proscribed personality”; and a proscribed person is persona-non-grata, a person without status and thus readily expendable on the least available opportunity.

The good news for the Attorney-General, however, is that now that he has boldly identified himself as one of us patriotic Ghanaians, he can almost rest assured and quite easy that the entire world will be watching his back for him. Now, what remains to be done is for Mr. Amidu to promptly call for either a bi-partisan parliamentary enquiry into the Woyome/Gorgormi scandal, preferably via the Public Accounts Committee, as already suggested by Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey, with full hearings and appearances publicly conducted, or an independent team of international jurists and investigators, with full judicial and subpoena powers being made integral to its terms of reference.

The preceding is necessary because so far, President John Evans Atta-Mills has more than amply and eerily demonstrated that he is flagrantly incapable of personally calling the shots on the Woyome/Gorgormi scandal, largely based on his initial rush to judgment, and his rather pathetic and “un-presidential” promise to guarantee the criminal suspect every available state security and judicial protection in order for Mr. Alfred “Gorgormi” Woyome to voraciously enjoy his “sumptuous” pelf.

*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 Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###