Following the publication of my article titled “It Is Not Just Alleged, Trust Me, I Saw the Videotape Fiili-Fiili” (Modernghana.com 6/17/20), a reader by the name of Paa Kwesi – they are almost always called Paa Kwesi – wrote on the “Comments” tab of the article and posed the following questions vis-à-vis the recent arrest of Mr. Kwabena Owusu-Agyei, popularly nicknamed “Apostle Weed” by some of his critics and detractors: “Kwame, You and I were not there when Apostle Agyei was searched and weed found on him! Were you an eyewitness? We all saw the video of the arrest when he was with the journalists. Was he searched? Where was the search done? Who are [were?] the witnesses? Have you heard from the suspect?”
I find Paa Kwesi’s questions to be quite fascinating and worth our critical examination and evaluation. But, of course, it also bears to recognize the fact that unlike Paa Kwesi, I do not have the luxury of making purely academic and intellectual arguments about this issue because the targets of abuse and ridicule, other than Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, for whose professional competence and integrity I have utmost admiration and respect, are my consanguineal relatives, namely, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and the immortalized Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah. The crime for which the targets of Apostle Ganger’s torrents of insults were being hurled, including the Chairperson of Ghana’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), was simply that President Akufo-Addo happened to be the legally, legitimately and constitutionally elected President of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, and not the former President, to wit, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, whom Nana Akufo-Addo seismically trounced in the 2016 Presidential Election and is likely to repeat the same in the 2020 Presidential Election.
In pretty much the same logic, Apostle Kwabena Owusu-Agyei, who happens to be about the same age as yours truly and who shares an identical connection to Prempeh College, was scandalously and wantonly inciting hatred and vitriol against Mrs. Mensa because the latter, with the constitutionally legitimate approval of Ghana’s Parliament and forensically attested credibility and validity, had decided to compile a new National Biometric Voters’ Register (NBVR) as a sure and solid means of ensuring that Fourth-Republican Ghana will be provided with the cleanest National Voters’ Register (NVR) in the 63-year history of our beloved country. Apostle Ganger also took execrable aim at two of my most revered forebears, namely, Nana Akyea-Mensa – aka Barima Ohemeng or Mr. Emmanuel R. Mensah Ohemeng – and the immortalized Doyen of Gold Coast and modern Ghanaian Politics, Dr. Danquah, as noted in the preceding paragraphs.
Contextually speaking, Apostle Owusu-Agyei’s virulently expressed displeasure with Mrs. Mensa’s Parliament-sanctioned decision to compile a new National Voters’ Register had absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with either the person or memory of Dr. Danquah. If we may also pertinently ask Paa Kwesi: Was Apostle “Ganger” Kwabena Agyei alive when the savage slaying of Nana Akyea Mensah occurred in 1944? Precisely what forensically credible evidence does this spacy Kumasi street boy has for concluding that, indeed, it was Dr. Danquah who had ordered the ritual murder of Nana Akyea Mensah? And just why is Paa Kwesi far less interested in such criminal and unconscionable trucking of whole cloth of mendacity than the fact of whether, indeed, a considerable quantity of cannabis had been found on the person of Mr. Owusu-Agyei? Does the mere right to free expression authorize Apostle Ganger to incite deadly hatred both against the substantive President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, and the Electoral Commissioner, to wit, Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensah?
Well, for the instructive information of Paa Kwesi, a presumably staunch member, supporter or sympathizer of the National Democratic Congress, our National Security Agents are constitutionally empowered to effect the arrest of antisocially criminal elements and suspects of the reprobate caliber of Apostle Owusu-Agyei; as well, whatever incriminating evidence was uncovered on an arrested criminal suspect can perfectly be tendered in evidence against this criminal suspect. The question of whether such judicially incriminating evidence has validity can be best determined by an attorney that either the State provides for Mr. Owusu-Agyei, or the criminal suspect and/or his relatives decide to engage in defense of the suspect.
There is absolutely no nonsensical question of whether or not any of us viewers of the digital video clip widely broadcast on YouTube and the various Ghanaian television networks were eyewitnesses to the arrest of the criminal suspect. Most of the global community did not witness, first-hand, the chokehold killing of Mr. George Perry Floyd by Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Does this mean that the obstreperous or irrepressible explosion of global outrage is suspect because “You and I were not there”? Is this kind of idiotic thinking uniquely Ghanaian or pandemically African? Of course, Apostle Ganger is perfectly entitled to the reservation of the judgment or verdict of the court of public opinion until the jury has returned the same. For this author, however, if, indeed, Apostle Ganger claims to reserve the inalienable right to desecrate the memory of my forebears, then, of course, all bets are off.
*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr@modernghana.com