By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In the wake of the predictable acquittal of all 15 suspects in the March 2002 murder of the supreme overlord of the Dagbon State, Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II, former President Jerry John Rawlings issued a harshly worded statement criticizing the Atta-Mills government for unwisely attempting to take the easy road towards the promised arrest, prosecution and conviction of the alleged suspects in this most heinous regicide (See “Rawlings: Ya-Na Court Ruling Should Not Surprise Anyone” MyJoyOnline.com 3/30/11).
In the main, the following is what former PNDC’s Chairman Rawlings had to say by way of an oblique indictment of the Mills-Mahama administration: “This judgment should not come as a surprise to anyone. Right from the onset [outset?] [,] I had been suggesting and insisting on fresh investigations because the old Wuaku [Commission] Report refused to admit serious and damning evidence – evidence that pointed all the way into [sic] the complicity of certain personalities in the last government.”
Actually, it would be more truthful to observe that while, indeed, the Wuaku Commission Report had fingered several key culprits in the Gbewaa Palace tragedy, the Commission was very careful to also emphasize the fact that the culprits were almost evenly divided between the Abudu and Andani gates of the Dagbon royal family. In other words, what the Commission wanted Ghanaians and the rest of the stunned and flabbergasted outside world to fully appreciate was the fact that the violent events culminating in the death of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II, was fundamentally an integral part of the running saga of a family feud that had been raging for several generations prior to the March 2002 tragedy.
Consequently, the Gbewaa Palace outrage required a far more delicate means of resolution than the largely clinical apparatus of Ghana’s British-inherited judicial system. And the latter appears to have largely informed the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government’s decision to establish a panel composed of some of the country’s most distinguished and respectable traditional rulers to assist in finding a lasting solution to this otherwise purely familial affair.
Predictably, famished of any significant electioneering campaign material with which to mordantly assail its NPP political opponents, Mr. Rawlings and his National Democratic Congress cohorts decided to politicize the Dagbon tragedy for political capital and mileage. Still, what is significant here is for Mr. Rawlings to ask himself why, as the authoritative founder and patriarch of the ruling National Democratic Congress, his former loyal lieutenant and now-President John Evans Atta-Mills, himself quite a remarkable legal mind, roundly rejected the purported call of his former boss for “fresh investigations,” regarding the identity of the culprits responsible for the Gbewaa Palace regicide.
It is also quite fascinating, if largely because it exposes the gross impudence and abject hypocrisy of Ghana’s bloodiest postcolonial tyrant, that Mr. Rawlings would gratuitously attempt to connect the Gbewaa Palace tragedy with the alleged murder of Alhaji Issah Mobilla, a rump-CPP operative, and that of an unnamed police officer at the residence of a former Volta Regional Minister by state security agents during the Kufuor tenure, and yet totally ignore Mr. Rawlings’ own personal supervision of the anti-Akan assassination of Justices Koranteng-Addow, Sarkodie and Agyepong, as well as Major Sam Acquah.
It is also rather ironic for Mr. Rawlings to suggest that in the cases of Mr. Mobilla and the unnamed police officer, dastardly attempts were made “to sacrifice pawns and suppress evidence.” Actually, the foregoing is exactly what happened in the wake of the release of the Special Investigations Board (SIB) report on the assassination of the three Supreme Court judges and the retired Army officer in 1982. In the latter instance, rather than have the real culprits face the full revolutionary music of death by firing squad, Messrs. Rawlings and Kojo Tsikata decided to pawn Messrs. Joachim Amartey-Kwei, Amedeka and one or two others.
And here also, as we have noted several times elsewhere in the past, it seems as if Mr. Rawlings has quixotically indemnified himself on the dubious strength of a largely amnesiac or even timid Ghanaian electorate.
What was most significant about his press release in the wake of the landmark dismissal of the charges against all 15 suspects in the Ya-Na Yakubu Andani regicide, is the apparently grim revelation to Mr. Jerry John Rawlings of the proverbial handwriting on the wall. In sum, like those of us avid students and keen observers of NDC political gimmickry, the bungling of the Gbewaa Palace case may very well mark the beginning of the end of the pseudo-socialist so-called National Democratic Congress as Ghanaians have gotten to know the latter over the past two decades.
To the preceding effect, this is the lie that Mr. Rawlings decided to tell Ghanaians last Wednesday: “If the approach to these murder issues and the refusal [of the Mills-Mahama government] to also investigate serious crimes against the people of this nation; if this ineptitude and omissions are designed to destroy the NDC, let me assure them on behalf of the people of this country that they will rather destroy themselves, not the NDC, the party that was born out of the quest for integrity, truth and justice by our people.”
In other words, having now arrived at the quite amusing conclusion that it is his own wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, who is best positioned to champion the Robin Hood ideals of the P/NDC, Mr. Rawlings feels compelled to caustically impugn the integrity of the very man he personally handpicked for the presidency a la his infamous Swedru Declaration.
Interestingly, Mr. Rawlings also feels that, perhaps, he would be even more effective if in seriously undermining the credibility of Messrs. Atta-Mills and Dramani Mahama, he is also seen to be damning the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) whose sole crime appears to entail having had one of its leading legal lights, by the name of Mr. Samuel Atta-Akyea, poignantly and deftly expose the Ya-Na-peddling key NDC operatives for the charlatanic cynics that they veritably are!
On the latter score, a delightfully humbled Mr. Rawlings appears to have briefly regained his presence of mind, almost to the curious extent of rhetorically waxing like the seasoned statesman that he has never been: “I am also appealing to the Abudus and Andanis to recognize that my numerous calls for an impartial and credible investigation was aimed at ensuring a lasting resolution and prosecution of a criminal act. I have taken no sides[,] except to call for justice and I appeal to you to do the same and not allow political perversions to keep you divided while justice and truth remain suppressed.”
Conversely, for the man whom Mr. Rawlings would rather have his own wife immediately replace as Ghana’s Chief-of-State, the former Ghanaian strongman appears to be full of contempt and spite: “To have used the evidence in the Wuaku report was not only an insult to the intelligence of Ghanaians but a perversion of the truth and justice.”
*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 a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Insttitute (DI) and the author, most recently, of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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