Thursday, April 6’s storming of the premises of the Kumasi Circuit Court by some members of the New Patriotic Party-affiliated militia group called the Delta Force, was inexcusably appalling. The Asante Regional Police Commander has already taken full responsibility for the failure of police personnel to anticipate and preempt the decision by the Delta Force members to defy the remand and custodial ruling of Judge Mary Senkyire on some 13 indicted members of the group who are accused of having either assaulted or attempted to assault the newly appointed Asante Regional Security Coordinator, Mr. George Adjei.
As of this writing, there were conflicting reports regarding what actually transpired at both the headquarters of the Asante Regional Coordinating Council and the Kumasi Circuit Court. What is clear, however, is that the members of the Delta Force are in breach of judicial contempt and the criminal attempt to nullify a presidential decision. Among political cynics within the ranks of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), the actions of the Delta Force’s members are being characterized as one that is tantamount to treason or a veritable attempt to overthrow the Akufo-Addo Administration. These NDC apparatchiks must know what they are talking about because their party was founded by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, a career coup-plotter and former Ghana Airforce flight-lieutenant who is infamous for having little respect for the elderly, authority and democratic governance.
However one interprets their egregiously gross misbehavior, the members of the Delta Force could be aptly envisaged to have been merely following the bad precedents set by such National Democratic Congress’ leaders as the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, a former professor of law at the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, who used two of his young junior ministers, namely, Dr. Edward Omane-Boamah and Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, to scandalously defy a Supreme Court ruling in the matter of Obetsebi-Lamptey vs Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Omane-Boamah, in which the Wood Supreme Court ordered the immediate release and return of the legitimately acquired state-owned landed and real-estate property to the owner, to wit, the former National Chairman of the then-main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, deceased.
Then in the middle of last year, or thereabouts, a group of three NDC-sponsored talk-radio operatives, namely, Messrs. Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase (aka Mugabe), publicly threatened to have 60-something-year-old Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood raped, as well as have several of her colleagues and associates on the Supreme Court physically inflicted with harm, if these Apex-Court judges refused to collaborate with the Chairperson of the country’s Electoral Commission, Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, to rig the 2016 general election in favor of then-President John Dramani Mahama. It is also significant to note that Mr. Salifu Maase, the host of the program on which the Montie Trio regularly appeared, has publicly stated on air that it was the now-former President Mahama who had invited him down from his London, UK, domiciliary to help him rake and peddle muck against his main political opponents.
The trio would be sentenced to serve 4 months’ imprisonment at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison, only to have President Mahama summarily overrule the Supreme Court’s verdict and spring the three convicts out of their jail house, after Messrs. Nelson, Gunn and Maase had served only half of their sentences. Now, it is very likely that the Delta Force hooligans were misguidedly “cueing” the criminal behavior of Messrs. Atta-Mills, Okudzeto-Ablakwa, Omane-Boamah and the Montie Trio, among a legion of other NDC key operatives, when they decided to storm both the headquarters of the Asante Regional Coordinating Council and the Kumasi Circuit Court. Which, of course, is not to excuse this act of abject criminality on the part of the Delta Force’s members. For the NPP government, under President Akufo-addo, has already more than amply demonstrated that it places a higher premium on justice and discipline than any National Democratic Congress’ regime in the last 30 years.
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