This is not a column I had intended to write; but, fortunately or unfortunately, a column that I recently wrote and published which was captioned “Cut this Primitive, ‘Prophetic’ Tribalism, Pastor Owusu-Adjei,” which appeared on several Ghanaian media websites, including the Berlin-based AfricaNewsAnalysis (12/17/16), convinced me of the need to follow it up with the present write-up, as many a Ghanaian reader is wont to characterizing the same. In the previous column, I took issue with one Pastor Kwabena Owusu-Adjei, founding-leader of a church called Hezekiah Apostolic Ministry, who claims to have had a divine revelation indicating the Mr. J. B. Danquah-Adu, the grandson of the legendary Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics, had been contractually slain at the behest of then-Candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in order to ensure that the now-President-Elect Akufo-Addo would win the 2016 presidential election hands down.
Well, what brings me back to this issue is the comment by somebody going by the alias of “Onaapo,” who curiously claims that on the night of the brutal slaying of the then-New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa North, Mr. Danquah-Adu had paid a creditor’s visit to the Nima residence of President-Elect Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to demand the immediate repayment of some $ 5 million which the latter allegedly owed his slain cousin and left the Akufo-Addo residence at 11pm (See the Comments section of my column titled “Cut this Primitive, ‘Prophetic’ Tribalism, Pastor Owusu-Adjei” Ghanaweb.com 12/20/16). I am herewith demanding that if “Onaapo” is convinced that s/he has the smoking gun linking Mr. Danquah-Adu to his killer or killers, s/he has both a moral and legal obligation to promptly provide such evidence to police investigators, rather than maliciously resorting to the equally criminal act of gratuitously assassinating the character of President-Elect Akufo-Addo.
What I have said in a couple, or so, of my columns in the recent past is the fact that initial police investigators’ reports provided to the media clearly indicated that the alleged killers of Mr. Danquah-Adu had confessed to having been contracted to rubout the deceased Certified Public Accountant (CPA). We would also be informed that at least the phone number of a highly placed Mahama appointee resident at the Flagstaff House had appeared on one of the cellphones allegedly owned by Mr. Danquah-Adu several days before the latter’s gory slaying. But even more significantly, we were told that the owner of the phone number, who was widely known to work from the Flagstaff House, had threatened the life of the Abuakwa-North MP. One of the criminal suspects, we were even told, had confessed to police investigators that he had purchased a pair of shoes and some clothing with his share of the blood money.
This narrative would dramatically change later on upon further interrogations of the alleged criminal suspects. And as of this writing, the psychological state of the young man who claims to have personally stabbed Mr. Danquah-Adu was being questioned by legal experts involved in the case. All these forensic obfuscations are what make it imperative for Pastor Owusu-Adjei and “Onaapo” to present whatever forensically sustainable evidence they have vis-à-vis the suspected killers of Mr. Danquah-Adu to the appropriate authorities and stop their malicious assassination of the character of President-Elect Akufo-Addo. I have also questioned why Mr. Victor Smith, the outgoing Ghana High Commissioner to Britain, and former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Abuakwa-North who, by the way, had not participated in his party’s parliamentary primary, would summarily bump off the winner of the primary and have his name registered with the Electoral Commission (EC) as the NDC Candidate for Abuakwa-North in the 2016 parliamentary election.
We must also significantly note here that Mr. Smith had neither participated in the by-election conducted in the Abuakwa-North constituency to find a replacement for Mr. Danquah-Adu. I have also significantly questioned why Mr. Samuel Atta-Akyea, the incumbent New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Abuakwa-South and a relative of both President-elect Akufo-Addo and the late Mr. Danquah-Adu, would publicly remark in the wake of the brutal murder of the latter that Mr. Danquah-Adu’s death augured well for the electoral fortunes of the New Patriotic Party. If Mr. Atta-Akyea had the mysterious demise of President John Evans Atta-Mills in mind when he made the scandalous remark that has been widely attributed to him, then, of course, a critical examination of the circumstances under which these two of the country’s most notable politicians met their deaths would be in order.
In effect, I have been fair and objective in my discussion of this appetite-dulling issue. As for the abjectly nonsensical accusation of “name-dropping” on the part of yours truly, I wish those readers and critics who have made a mission out of such decidedly factual and discursively relevant observations could fully appreciate the fact that I have distinguished myself more than well enough to have any need of establishing my bona fides by vaingloriously dropping any Ghanaian household names. By the same token, I cannot be held either guilty or responsible for readers and critics who feel any social and/or personal inadequacies of any sort, for which apparent reason/s they feel the need to impugn my motives for establishing my rightful place within the larger scheme of Ghanaian society and culture.
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