Opinion: Rawlings and Tsikata Murdered the Accra High Court Judges, Period! By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

The writer, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jnr., Ph.D.

Any Ghanaian citizen or resident of my age group – which means upwards of 50 years old – is fully aware of the stark and incontrovertible fact that it was Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and his cousin, clansman and National Security Adviser, Captain (Rd) Kojo Tsikata, talk of nepotism, who ordered the series of the criminal chain of events that precipitated the abduction and heinous assassination of the three immortalized Accra High Court Judges on the night of June 30, 1982. And so I really don’t see any reason why any serious and/or studious or well-read Ghanaian journalist would want to confront former President Rawlings about the cold-calculating protagonists or assassins who engineered this most barbaric act of criminality of the highest order some 36 years after the fact.

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All the facts surrounding this most brutal case of ethnic cleansing of the extant highest court of the land are meticulously, systematically and neatly documented in the report of the Special Investigations Board (SIB), the blue-ribbon commission composed of some of the best and brightest legal lights in the country at the time that was charged with uncovering the whodunit of this most abominable Crime of the Century that nearly brought Ghana to the brink of a civil war. And, by the way, the Azu-Crabbe Commission that investigated the murder of the judges and produced the landmark SIB Report, was chaired by the late Justice Samuel Azu-Crabbe, the elder brother of the recently deceased Justice V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe. And the victims involved, all three of them of Akan descent, were Justices Frederick Poku-Sarkodie, Mrs. Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, and Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong.

We must also quickly point out that all the three High Court Judges were actually Supreme Court Justices; but, as I have been reliably informed, at the time of their brutal assassinations, the Supreme Court of Ghana had then been dissolved or summarily abolished by the Ignatius Kutu Acheampong-led junta of the Supreme Military Council (SMC-I), formerly and originally called the National Redemption Council (NRC). The oldest of these slain judges, Mr. Poku-Sarkodie, was also known to have served on the Supreme Court during the tenure of the Kwame Nkrumah-led regime of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). Of course, Mr. Rawlings is inalienably entitled to his own personal take or opinion on the latest filmic documentary reportedly produced by the Kwasi Twum-owned and operated Multimedia Group of Companies, parent company of the JoyOnline media conglomerate.

What the longest-reigning and most extortionate Ghanaian military dictator does not have any inalienable entitlement to is the right to fabricate his own version of the truths and/or facts about the criminal chain of events that culminated in the Mafia-style assassination and unconscionable conflagration or torching of the corpses of the slain judges whose granitic memorial busts presently grace the forecourt of the Supreme Court Buildings in our nation’s capital of Accra, across the street from the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, adjacent to the latter of which stands the building housing the Accra Arts Center, currently renamed The Center for National Arts and Culture, or some such leftist-sounding designation, by the erstwhile Rawlings-led regime of the National Democratic Congress.

If this is not already being taught in the curricula of our public schools, from elementary to the tertiary levels, then the brutal assassination of the Accra High Court Judges needs to be officially made an integral part of the academic curriculum, as well as all other similar occurrences in the country since independence, and other equally significant and traumatic events going as far back as recorded history for the long-term survival and development of the country. That the Multimedia-produced and/or sponsored documentary on the brutal assassination of the three martyred judges should rekindle national discussions is very healthy for the instruction of our youths on the extensive gamut of upheavals and other catastrophic events and processes that have brought the nation to where we find ourselves presently.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com  Ghanaffairs

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