According to Mr. Julius K. Nyerere, the immortalized “Mwalimu” and first postcolonial president of the Democratic Republic of Tanzania, it was the Anopheles Mosquito who, literally, wrote the most progressive and resplendent chapter of the history of the making or creation of Modern Ghana, and not lawyers, contrary to what President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would have Ghanaians believe (See “ ‘Noblest Chapters of Ghana’s Modern History Written by Lawyers’ – Akufo-Addo” Flagstaff House / Ghanaweb.com 9/11/17). President Nyerere was making a reference to the fact of Ghana’s having been the first Sub-Saharan African nation to have reasserted her sovereignty from British colonial imperialism.
According to the late Tanzanian leader, it would be an egregious error for any Ghanaian leader, scholar or citizen to assume that Ghanaians had been endowed with an extraordinary genius of courage or wisdom and inventiveness that the citizens of the other so-called Black-African countries woefully lacked. Reading the report of Nana Akufo-Addo’s address to the National Conference of the members of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), I could not help but slap myself silly with uncontrollable laughter. The fact of the matter is that frontline lawyers like Mr. Joseph Ephraim Casely-Hayford and Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah distinguished themselves more in their capacity as lambent-witted journalists than as leading legal lights, although an equally remarkable case could be made for their role in the latter professional enterprise as well.
As journalists, Messrs. Casely-Hayford and Danquah, and one flagrantly errs in omitting mention of the Rev. Attoh-Ahuma, these pioneering statesmen exponentially raised the civic consciousness of ordinary Ghanaian citizens on the need to hold their own proudly among the comity of global polities. But I also felt deeply scandalized by the implication that today’s average Ghanaian lawyer, the shyster and criminal inventors of the morbid cultural regime of Judgment Debt, had anything worthwhile to do with the phenomenal achievements of immortalized luminaries like Messrs. Thomas Hutton-Mills – a Danquah mentor – Kobina Sekyi, Kojo Thompson, Akilakpa Sawyerr and Ebenezer Obetsebi-Lamptey, among a host of others.
The mention of Dr. Obed Asamoah sent me crashing off my chair and to the bare varnished wooden floor of my living room, if also because, as I vividly recalled, as the prime legal adviser, or Attorney-General, to strongman Jerry John Rawlings, the former University of Ghana’s law school lecturer has done more to regress the legal and civic enlightenment of postcolonial Ghanaians than any other putative legal light. I also have absolutely no doubt in my mind that rascally and rogue lawyers like Messrs. Tsatsu Tsikata, Ato Dadzie, Amaliba and the rest of the National Democratic Congress’ hoodlum pack have absolutely nothing to do with the salutary democratic dispensation being currently enjoyed by Ghanaian citizens.
Who can also doubt the front-row seat of Prof. Albert Adu-Boahen? Of course, Nana Akufo-Addo was dead-on-target to list the names of his own maternal uncle, Mr. William “Paa Willie” Ofori-Atta, the original proponent of free education in Ghana in the Twentieth Century (See Working Papers of the Gold Coast Youth Conference), as well as Messrs. B. J. daRocha, Joe Appiah and Victor Owusu, with Sgt. Adjetey, Cpl. Attipoe and Pt. Odartey-Lamptey bringing up the rear, as it were.
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