By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 31, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
The landmark unanimous decision by the Wood-presided Supreme Court for Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome to refund the humongous amount of GHC 51.2 million stolen from the longsuffering and hardworking people of Ghana is final. Contrary to what some quack and shyster lawyers would have the rest of s believe, the Wood Decision on Woyome v. The People of Ghana, or the Woyome Decision, properly speaking, cannot be appealed. The Supreme Court is the Court of Last Resort.
Now, what Ghanaians ought to be focused upon is when and how the culprit gets to return the people's money to where it belongs. Of course, I can fully appreciate the anger of firebrand opposition politicians like Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyepong and Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, but such visceral effusions of conniption have absolutely no place in the realm of judicial justice (See "Government Must Not Shield Officials Involved In Woyome Case" Daily Guide / Modernghana.com 7/31/14).
What Ghanaians ought to be discussing in the wake of Decision Woyome, if anything at all, is the possible interest payment on the amount owed the state by the culprit. For, as long as the GHC 51.2 million illegally remained in the possession of Mr. Woyome and his principals and cronies, the afore-referenced amount was not being profitably applied to the development of the country. In the past, it had been widely publicized by the national media that the GHC 51.2 million had been divvied up by this mega-scam-artist among his friends and associates.
In other words, I don't doubt the possible criminal complicity of Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. But what is even more fascinating is the apparent complicity of the Mills-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the particular way and manner in which Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu was shuffled from the Attorney-General's portfolio into that of the equally critical portfolio of Minister of Education.
Likewise, his much-touted humility and levelheadedness and all, Ghanaians have, nevertheless, not forgotten how the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills coddled Mr. Woyome to the point of the inexcusably absurd by publicly and apologetically vowing to protect the putatively foremost underwriter of NDC electioneering activities from the deliberately blind tentacles of judicial justice.
And for those addle-brained NDC fanatics who would have the rest of us envisage President Atta-Mills as the best thing that happened to Fourth-Republican Ghanaian political culture, it ought not to be forgotten that it was in his bid to justifiably and patriotically use his office of Attorney-General to retrieve Mr. Woyome's ill-gotten judgment-debt wealth that saw Mr. Martin Amidu, literally, jack-booted out of the Mills-Mahama government.
And so, really, I have an extremely difficult time seeing the same morally sterling qualities that his ardent supporters and sympathizers claimed to see in my good, old Uncle Tarkwa-Atta. Indeed, had God in his great and ineffable, as well as infallible, and infinite wisdom not seen it fit to "auspiciously" push President Mills out of the Osu Castle and the Flagstaff House - my profuse apologies to Little Dramani - it is quite certain that the Woyome Decision would never have come to pass.
Which, of course, is not to stake out any grandiose and heroic claim for President Mahama, Uncle Tarkwa-Atta's arch-lieutenant at the time. Then again, it would not be wholly out of place to give at least some rhetorical and moral credit to the Bole-Bamboi chieftain, for his public promise to see to it that Mr. Woyome was brought to book.
For now, even as I wrote nearly two years ago to unreservedly line up my staunch support behind the then-recently fired Mr. Amidu, for seemingly quixotically declaring his, in retrospect, long and hard-fought one-man legal war against the fearsome NDC political machine and the globally infamous Sogakope Mafia, it is Mr. Amidu who deserves to be awarded the next Mo Ibrahim Africa Prize for Constructive and Patriotic Leadership.
I hope Busummuru Kofi (Atta) Annan is sedulously watching and listening. God bless our homeland Ghana, and also my Aunt Theodosia Asihene-Okoh of Kyebi-Adadientem. Finally, I have something to love and respect about my birth-country, Ghana, and my countrymen and women.
"Mogyabi Yedom Akudonto!"
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