The last time that we heard about the Kenyenso case, some 8 criminal suspects had allegedly been apprehended with investigations proceeding assiduously around the clock. Since then, nothing else has been heard from either the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) or the Flagstaff House. Then also, there is the barbaric acid-dousing assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, the former Upper-East Regional Chairman of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), in which the younger brother of Mr. Paul A. Afoko, the indefinitely suspended National Chairman of the NPP, Mr. Gregory Afoko, is being held in police custody, as the prime suspect of Mr. Mahama’s death, while judicial proceedings unfold at an intolerably slow snail pace.
There is also, of course, the equally brutal stabbing death of Mr. Abubakar Saddiq, a well-known staunch Akufo-Addo partisan, at Kumasi-Aboabo. Mr. Saddiq is alleged to have been murdered by New Patriotic Party elements averse to both the leadership and the presidential ambitions of Ghana’s former Justice and Foreign Minister under the tenure of President John Agyekum-Kufuor. All these cases are not remarkably known to be proceeding expeditiously as they ought to, for reasons that are not clear to many a studious observer of the Ghanaian judicial system and landscape.
And then just this Feb. 9, there was the brutal stabbing death of Akyem-Abuakwa North’s New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament, Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, the grandson of the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, Dr. J. B. Danquah. That it comes almost 51 years to the day of the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison assassination of Dr. Danquah by agents and surrogates of President Nkrumah, makes the latest political killing of a member of the Danquah Clan all the more blood-curdling.
We know that Mr. Danquah-Adu’s stabbing death was a political killing because initial police reports quoted the prime suspect, Mr. Daniel Asiedu, as having not only confessed to the crime but also having stated that he had been contracted by some unnamed individual or individuals to execute his victim, which the 19-year-old Mr. Asiedu had undertaken in the East Legon bedroom of Mr. Danquah-Adu. Then we were also told about the contractual amount of money and the fact that the suspect claimed to have used some of the said money to buy a pair of shoes. Then shortly thereafter, we were told by police-sourced reports that Mr. Asiedu was now singing a different tune by claiming that he had not been contracted to execute the Abuakwa-North MP after all; and that the entire operation had been a common act of robbery gone awry.
At any rate, what inspired the composition of this column was the report of a courtesy call that some family members and relatives of the slain Abuakwa-North MP paid on Speaker of Parliament Edward Doe Adjaho. The terse news report (of the visit) did not specifically note this, but very likely the call on the House Speaker was to officially announce the passing of Mr. Danquah-Adu, and perhaps also invite Mr. Adjaho to any scheduled funerary and/or celebratory arrangements or rituals in memory and honor of Mr. Danquah-Adu.
The Electoral Commission (EC) has also announced that on March 29 Instant, a bye-election will be held in Abuakwa-North to name a replacement for Mr. Danquah-Adu. As of this writing, a parliamentary primary had already successfully been held in Abuakwa-North for the purpose. In receiving the familial delegation of the late Mr. Danquah-Adu, 51 years old, just the other day, Speaker Adjaho noted that the deceased member of the august House was a fine and decent gentleman whose murder had not only shocked those who personally and professionally knew him but even more importantly, the real cause of whose death needed to be promptly and expeditiously probed and conclusively brought to a satisfactory judicial closure.
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