Putting the verdict of the Sir Arku-Korsah’s court in the spotlight
The common folklore in Ghanaian politics is that the CPP are unrivalled exponents of the dark art of political party propaganda - now called spin in modern parlance. But there is no better example that undercuts this myth and demonstrates the CPP's utter incompetence in political propaganda, than the Kulungugu trials that led to the dismissal of former learned Chief Justice Sir Kobina Arku-Korsah.
Most students of Ghana Politics (and History) remember two main things about
Kulungugu- quite apart from the attempted assassination itself - which, if
I may say so, often gets neglected and at best manages scant mention:
(1) Nkrumah dismissed
the Chief Justice because he did not like the verdict of the court; and
(2) Tawiah Adamafio, Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei and Coffie Crabbe were
instead convicted of the attempted assassination in the retrial that followed.
Over the years, much of the
discussion and literature on this topic has focused primarily on these two
outcomes. Indeed H.E. Kwesi Armah's recent very erudite piece for the 500th
edition of the New African Magazine did exactly that – once again!
This very short piece is not about
these well-rehearsed issues, but for the avoidance of doubt (and not for the
first time I should add) let me put my cards clearly on the table: Nkrumah’s
intervention in the Kulungugu trial was ill-advised and quite simply wrong! But
there is more to the Kulungugu trials than we have been made to believe and
that is what this piece aims to uncover and put out for debate.
What this piece is about is what we have failed to discuss in nearly
half-a-century and it is rather best-expressed in the form of a very
simple question which no one (if any) rarely asks: what exactly was Sir Arku
Korsah's court's verdict that Nkrumah overt-turned?
Here is what we know: there were
five accused persons charged with conspiracy to commit treason, arising out of
the attempted assassination of the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, First President of
the Republic of Ghana,
in Kulungugu in Northern Ghana on 1st
August 1962. These five persons were arraigned before a Special Criminal
Division of the High Court presided over by the Chief Justice Sir Arku-Korsah
and Justices W.B. Van Lare and Edward Akufo-Addo (who himself later became
Chief Justice and President of the Second Republic of Ghana). In their
unanimous verdict set out in some 70-pages on the 9th December 1963, the
learned Justices acquitted THREE of the FIVE accused persons namely: Tawia
Adamafio former Secretary General and Interior Minister of the ruling
Convention’s People’s Party (CPP), Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei the former Foreign
Minister and Hugh Horatio Crabbe a former CPP executive, all whom were found
not guilty, acquitted and discharged.
This leaves us with TWO of the
accused persons. But who exactly were these two? And what was the court’s
verdict on them? What happened to them? Sadly our historians and Political
Chroniclers have very little to say about these men.
Remember: the bomb at Kulungugu
blew a school child who was preparing to welcome President Nkrumah with a
bouquet of flowers into smithereens and killed eleven innocent Ghanaians as
well. Sadly, no one has accepted responsibility for this atrocious crime in
almost fifty years since it occurred neither has anyone been held accountable.
The people found guilty of treason
by the Arku-Korsah court, would by extension have been responsible for the
murder of twelve innocent Ghanaian citizens and all of the many others who were
maimed and injured so why do we not know anything about the two accused persons
who were not acquitted in the first trial? Why have we not heard much said or
written about these two? Is it by accident or design? Indeed why were the two
found unanimously guilty by the eminent Justices when all the CPP members
convicted in the subsequent retrial were all found NOT guilty? Maybe
now is the time to find out who they are and what their motivations were.
Discuss!
© Ekow Nelson
December 1, 2010, in a
very cold Moscow
This piece is dedicated to Tawiah
Adamafio, Coffie Crabbe and Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei (who for a fleeting moment
in my early years I was delightfully made to believe was my Dad).