It is not very well-edited, and the prepositions tend to go off-tangent many more times than they need to, if the critically thinking grammar-savvy reader is not to be unnecessarily distracted. Nevertheless, Mr. Kofi Ata’s quite interesting and insightful disquisition on the Afoko Assassination Saga, titled “Is the Afoko Trial a Threat to the Independence of Ghana’s Judiciary?” is undoubtedly a significant contribution to its subject of discourse (Modernghana.com 7/17/19). The author raises quite significant fundamental questions of procedural nature that ought not to be glossed over lightly. But I am also – tongue-in-cheek – wondering whether Mr. Ata could not have written a more impeccable legal disquisition if he had chosen to spend more of his academic life and time at the then St. Peter’s Secondary School (as a veritable and bona fide “Perscoba” or “Perscovite”), instead of fishing for salmon all day and night offshore of Cape Coast’s Mfantsipim School.
You see, by the period that I attended Okwawu-Nkwatia’s PERSCO, Mfantsipim was fast becoming passé. Achimota was largely an effete academy for the wayward and shiftless sons and daughters of the rich, powerful and thorough-going corrupt. We, however, almost always fancied the delicious and reasonably good-looking scholars of Wesley Girls’, who often gave us stiff competition at the “O”- and “A”-Level examinations, though custom and tradition dictated that we dream of ringing our wedding bells with the gorgeous Diamond-Diademed Girls of Akyem-Akwatia’s St. Rose’s. At any rate, it is not quite true, contrary to what Senior Kofi Ata would have his readers believe, that, in fact, Mr. Gregory Afoko, the prime suspect in the brutal assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama, then Regional Chairman of the then Candidate Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), had fully satisfied the conditions set by the Accra High Court where he was being trialed/tried for the justification of the granting of a bail bond to the long-detained defendant.
Actually, what Mr. Afoko’s lawyers had done, as poignantly observed by Mr. Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako, Editor-Publisher of the New Crusading Guide, was to witheringly insult the intelligence of the Accra High Court where the prime criminal suspect was being tried, by presenting mere photocopies of documents indicating that, indeed, should the prospective bailee or bail-seeker flee the elaborate tentacles of justice under the cover of Stygian darkness (now “Comrade” Kofi Ata can help me with these abracadabra terms), that landed property of quite a decent value could be attached and forfeited to the State, or whoever or whatsoever entity that may be concerned or so designated. Now, Senior Kofi Ata and I, that is, both of us fellow truckers, are fully well aware of the fact that showing up in court with mere photocopies of the real McCoy is inexcusably tantamount to a false declaration of a claim of ownership. It is the practical equivalent of a contempt of court charge.
I am not a legal maven, as the Dear Reader already knows, unlike Senior Kofi Ata, but I am one-hundred-percent certain of being smack on the side of common sense and fair play. And this is what is clearly and significantly lacking in the article under discussion (See “Revealed: Afoko Failed to Fulfill Bail Conditions – Kweku Baako” GhanaNewsPage.com 7/17/19). If anybody or party could be credibly and legitimately accused of “threatening judicial independence” or seriously undermining the credibility of Ghana’s judicial system, it was not Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo or any of her representatives and/or assigns. Rather, the guilty party here was squarely the Afoko attorneys or legal representatives, who inadvisably decided to test the patience and intelligence of the sitting High Court Judge by presenting what were clearly fake or counterfeit documents as “justifiable surety.”
Now, I think I deserve to be sponsored to the Ghana Law School for one of those crispy Makola-manufactured Honorary Doctorates by this hard-driving critic of Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo. At any rate, I tend to generally stay away from such obsolescent heavily Latinate terms as “Nolle Prosequi.” But, of course, in the context raised by the Cambridge, UK-based critic, I think the Attorney-General was perfectly savvy to have scrapped judicial proceedings at the time that she did, even at the very advanced stage of prosecutorial proceedings, as pontifically claimed by Mr. Kofi Ata, once Mr. Asabke Alangdi, the second most important suspect in the Adams Mahama Assassination Saga, had been nabbed, the critic tells us, in Côte D’Ivoire. To be certain, proceeding with the case would clearly have been tantamount to the height of prosecutorial folly and inexcusable absurdity. It would have literally amounted to throwing out a full-half or 50-percent of the incriminating evidence. And on the latter count ought to be vividly recalled that Mr. Asabke Alangdi was the Afoko partner-in-crime who took to his heels in the wake of the fatal assault of Mr. Adams with his wife, leaving the couple’s new-born baby behind.
You see, you simply do not leave your baby behind and flee into exile or assume the status and uncertain life of a fugitive if you have done absolutely nothing wrong or have absolutely nothing to hide from law-enforcement authorities. And then keep hiding until you are serendipitously apprehended some three years later in another country. You see, I had spent hundreds of man-hours of sleepless nights writing about the imperative need to swiftly prosecute the prime suspects in the Adams Mahama Assassination Saga and seen so little results that I had virtually come to terms with the practically inescapable fact that I might have been fighting for a lost cause. This is essentially why I find the pontifical self-righteousness of rabid critics like Mr. Kofi Ata to be even more criminal than the real prime suspects in the brutal assassination of Mr. Adams Mahama. I mean, this bloody and barbaric assassination was in its every aspect a political murder.
So, it beats my imagination why any critic would presume to so cavalierly impugn and impute ungodly political motives to the prosecutorial conduct of the Attorney-General in the case. And, finally, if one may humbly ask: Have critics like the author of the article discussed herein ever thought, for a split-second, that a freely walking Mr. Afoko has a far higher chance of getting rubbed out or outright liquidated in absolutely no time by some relatives, friends and sympathizers of the slain man? In other words, this Adams Mahama murder prime suspect may be better off being in protective custody. Trust me, Senior Kofi Ata, Up-North, they don’t dance “Kpanlogo” in a hail of gunfire.
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