By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
The next major educational project of a New Patriotic Party (NPP) government ought to be a University of the Humanities with a curricular emphasis on Critical Thinking; the latter appears to be the only surefire way of facilitating the rapid transfer of the kind of knowledge that the unconscionable lot among the key operatives of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) need to govern if Ghana is not to rapidly slide into the kind of philosophical and cultural stasis widely and commonly associated with the Paleolithic, or Old Stone, Age.
Until recently, for instance, I hadn’t quite realized that both the Upper-East and Upper-West campuses of the University for Development Studies (UDS) were the brainchildren of the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party. As to what had prevented the last NPP government from establishing these campuses as autonomous and independently operated institutions boggles the mind. We shall sort this strategic anomaly out in due course.
Anyway, in this segment of our series, we have decided to tackle widespread news reports that infamous criminal convict Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata will be leading the group of lawyers for the respondents in the New Patriotic Party legal contest vis-à-vis the political legitimacy of President John Dramani Mahama. What fascinates us here, though, is Mr. Tsikata’s quite predictable, albeit risibly outrageous, characterization of the NPP suit as one that woefully lacks factual validity and is “legally pathetic, [and] poor in arithmetic and [even] poorer in logic” (See “Tsikata to Lead Mahama’s Team of Lawyers in Election Petition” Citifmonline.com/Ghanaweb.com 1/6/13).
For a man who has proudly and boldly gone on record to be claiming that Dr. J. B. Danquah owes his fame and political relevance to his prison assassination by President Kwame Nkrumah, one can only wish him good luck. It is also interesting that the “Trokosi Boys” prefer to envisage their foremost legal light in terms of that one historically insignificant instance during which a patent combination of old friendship and mercy clearly tempered Nana Akufo-Addo’s prime opportunity to put this pathological criminal accomplice in the abduction and summary execution of the three Akan high court judges and the retired Ghana Army major behind bars for a remarkable temporal span.
And for those who may not know this, in terms of legal practice, Mr. Tsikata has absolutely no edge on Nana Akufo-Addo, let alone the other legal lights with whom the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice is contesting the fraudulent declaration of Mr. Mahama as President of the Democratic Republic of Ghana. And were Mr. Tsikata capable of honesty and truth-telling, he would since long have advised his fanatical devotees to be modest in their imperious and woefully misplaced presumptions about their man. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to high-end legal practice, Nana Akufo-Addo is far and away the mentor and Mr. Tsikata the student, a favorite student in the recent past, nevertheless.
Now, I don’t know anything about laws pertaining to the qualification of criminal convicts like Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata to practice before any legitimately constituted court of land, particularly the Supreme Court. But it does clearly appear to me that the former University of Ghana law lecturer is not yet “re-qualified” to stand before the august and erudite membership of the Supreme Court of Ghana, let alone cavalierly presume to practice before the same.
Besides, I don’t find it necessary to either quibble with or respond to the fact of whether, indeed, the “NPP’s petition is factually empty, legally pathetic, poor in arithmetic and poorer in logic,” though wonders what kind of legal logic landed “Comrade” Tsikata at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison.
What I do know for a fact is that among the members of my own clan and nuclear family, we have Ivy League-educated nuclear scientists and atomic physicists who have distinguished themselves far beyond the retarded mensural ken of Mr. Tsikata and his lackeys; and also reputable social scientists and entrepreneurs who have made a positive and enviable contribution to both the birth and development of Ghana. And so, really, this nonsense about warped logic and arithmetic belongs to cognitively addled Keta school boys like Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata and his ilk. By all means, “Akata” Tsatsu, Tofiakwa, Trokosi, bring it on!
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York Jan. 6, 2013 ###