By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 8, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
The decision by two members of the vigilante political activist group, Inside Ghana, to sue Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for nearly GHC 1 million for allegedly keeping two state-owned SUV's for some 19 months after leaving office is fascinatingly bizarre (See "Akufo-Addo Sued Over Out-of-Office Use of State Vehicles" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/8/15). It is "fascinatingly bizarre" because the plaintiffs deliberately fail to also account for the illegal and arbitrary seizure of at least two vehicles privately owned by the 2008 presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) shortly after the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills assumed the reins of governance in 2009.
And so maybe the Inside Ghana plaintiffs need to revisit the foregoing episode in order to get their figure right, vis-a-vis what they presume to be debt owed to the state by Nana Akufo-Addo, for allegedly holding unduly onto a Nissan Patrol and a Toyota Land Cruiser owned by the Republic of Ghana beyond his service as a Kufuor cabinet appointee.
But that the lawsuit by the Inside Ghana plaintiffs is a lurid copycat act of vengeance after a similar one filed by some members of the pressure group known as OccupyGhana against Dr. Joseph Oteng-Adjei, is all the more to be pitied. For not only is the Inside Ghana lawsuit inescapably infantile, there is absolutely no evidence indicating that the former National Democratic Congress' Energy Minister was meted the same scandalously vindictive treatment endured at the hands of the so-called King-of-Peace by his arch political opponent in Election 2008.
Even more importantly, Inside Ghana needs to explain to the general Ghanaian public precisely how it arrived at the amount of arrears allegedly owed the state by Nana Akufo-Add. As well, why the Inside Ghana plaintiffs suppose that they can actually instruct any legitimately constituted court of the land to use their figure of arrears in any determination of their suit against the country's former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. As we vividly recall, in the case of the wrongfully impounded Akufo-Addo-owned vehicles, the alleged culprit who was widely known to have operated from the Osu Castle, the extant august seat of the presidency, was fired by President Atta-Mills shortly thereafter.
It is also quite interesting how Inside Ghana appears to have flagrantly usurped the salaried functions of the Auditor-General's Department. Even more significant is the fact that the Inside Ghana plaintiffs may have opened a can of worms that they may not be able to lid up anytime soon, especially regarding where the cut-off point of their patent act of vendetta is concerned. In other words, if the Inside Ghana plaintiffs are serious about their intention to probe all cases of government officials who did not promptly return their state-owned vehicles, and residences as well, upon the expiration of their dates of service, then they may have to go as far back as the end of the Rawlings-led junta/ dictatorship of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).
Then also, Inside Ghana may have to revisit the end of the Rawlings-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to ferret out spongers of the public dole/dough. In short, logically speaking, Nana Akufo-Addo's case, in terms of temporal ranking, is far down the list. And the rule of law, justice and fair play demands that older crimes and malfeasances be first investigated and sanctioned before the most recent ones are judicially taken up.
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