By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 2, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]
The arrest of Dr. Edmund Ayo Ani, Managing-Director of Marbles and Granites, a quarrying company, by a SWAT Team from the Ghana Police Service (GPS) makes for a quite fascinating reading (See “I Ordered Arrest of Marbles and Granites MD – Baba Kamara” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/2/16). It makes for fascinating reading because the man who caused the arrest of Dr. Ayo Ani, Alhaji Baba Kamara, is a National Security Advisor who apparently believes that he can take the law into his own hands. Well, whoever put such criminal thought into Alhaji Kamara’s head ought to promptly disabuse him of the same. In other words, this National Democratic Congress’ vigilante ought to be thoroughly deprogrammed before he irreparably runs himself over the proverbial cliff.
Dr. Ayo Ani is accused of having taken photographs of some 500 Mahindra 4x4 pick-up trucks, reportedly belonging to the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), and making these pictures readily available to those of us who are avidly concerned about the salutary development of Ghanaian democracy. We are further told that the photographed trucks were being illegally “rebranded” in the party colors of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), which simply means that the NCCE personnel would be criminally circumvented from undertaking their comfortably salaried work of educating the Ghanaian public and the general citizenry on their right and need to exercising their franchise in the lead-up to Election 2016. Actually, this is only one of the legion civic responsibilities of the staff of the NCCE.
We must also quickly point out that this was the very statutory establishment headed by Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei before President Mahama transferred her to the Electoral Commission (EC). My intention here is not to accuse Commissioner Osei of any wrongdoing, absolutely none whatsoever, but to merely point out the fact that the connection here is eerily unmistakable. Now, Alhaji Kamara has just announced to the world that he intends to have Dr. Ayo Ani arraigned before a legitimately constituted court of law and rigorously prosecuted beginning this coming Monday. And so the tough-talking National Security Advisor can rest assured that those of us avid scholars, students and amateur observers of the national political scene are studiously watching.
Alhaji Kamara also says that he caused the summary arrest of Dr. Ayo Ani because the yard or landed property on which these NCCE-consigned Mahindra pick-up trucks were being kept for covert rebranding is his bona fide private property. We don’t doubt his ability to distinguish his own private property from that of the Ghanaian State and its citizenry at large. In short, what is more important here and in dire need of explaining by Alhaji Kamara, is how these vehicles allegedly belonging to the NCCE found their way onto his personal property and, as well, why he and/or his assigns decided to have vehicular properties belonging to the Republic of Ghana branded in the partisan colors of the National Democratic Congress. And, by the way, how much has the Government of Ghana been paying to Alhaji Kamara by way of monthly rent?
Indeed, Dr. Ayo Ani may well have done our nation and Ghana’s fledgling democratic dispensation and culture the greatest service of his life; and if ours were a delectably functioning democracy, our parliamentarians would be studiously deliberating on how to fittingly honor Dr. Ayo Ani with our highest national civic merit award. You may not believe this, dear reader, but you had better believe it; and it is the fact the man who is really in serious trouble here is Alhaji Baba Kamara, not Dr. Edmund Ayo Ani, who was laudably playing the yeomanly role of a patriotic citizen to the putridly corrupt para-executive scam-artistry of the man presumptuous and shameless enough to “show him where power lies.”
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