Opinion: Do the Indemnity Clauses Unsettle Ghanaian Citizenship Laws? by Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe Jnr., Ph.D.

I don’t really suppose that Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the National Democratic Congress’ Parliamentary Minority Leader, wants to take issue with a lambent-witted first-rate legal light as Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa, the Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), and the IEC itself, over the question of who best appreciates what it legally and constitutionally means to be a bona fide Ghanaian citizen. The plaintiff may have just in a dozen years conveniently decided that Ghanaians are darn too amnesiac to still remember the fact that Mr. Iddrisu’s Master of Sociology Degree was summarily withdrawn on uncontested charges of plagiarism and academic dishonesty by the Academic Council of the country’s foremost tertiary academy, to wit, the University of Ghana, Legon, in 2008 or 2009 or thereabouts.

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In a more a legally responsible country like Germany, France, Britain or even the United States, not only would the Tamale-South’s National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament not have been forced to vacate his seat in Parliament and from the Atta-Mills and Mahama cabinets, Mr. Iddrisu could never have become a Parliamentary Majority or a Minority Leader in Ghana. This socially and legally irresponsible state of affairs ought to tell bona fide Ghanaian citizens just how low the quality of Ghanaian citizenship and democratic culture have sunk. We must also point out to both Mr. Iddrisu and his thievish NDC associates and cronies that criminally drawing double salaries, in flagrant breach of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution was not an emulative model of Ghanaian citizenship.

To be certain, robber-baron politicians like the Tamale-South’s NDC-MP ought to be among the last humans in the country to muster the temerity or chutzpah to lecture the rest of us about what constitutes the test of ideal citizenship in Ghana. The only legitimate National Identification Card that ought to be deemed to be kosher for registering to vote in the country is that which is officially issued by the Kenneth Attafuah-headed National Identification Authority (NIA), so it is not clear to law-abiding Ghanaian citizens like this writer, precisely what Mr. Iddrisu means when he so mendaciously and scandalously asserts that IEC Chair, Jean Mensa, one of the leading Constitutional Legal Experts in the country, has introduced a Constitutional Instrument (CI) in Parliament that seeks to either exclude or proscribe the National ID Card and the Birth Certificate as acceptable documents to be used in registering to vote in the country.

The man must be strung high up on drugs or he is in dire need of psychiatric examination and treatment. Indeed, if President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had promptly, unreservedly and dispassionately put double-salary drawing thieves and robber-barons like Mr. Haruna Iddrisu away, when Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo meticulously unearthed the same, we would not have these Mahama payola-guzzling henchmen and goofballs lecturing their moral and intellectual superiors about what constitutes authentic citizenship in Ghana. What Mr. Iddrisu would unconscionably have Ghanaians endorse are those counterfeit/fake IDs that the NDC’s operatives criminally printed and distributed to non-Ghanaian citizens resident in some of our neighboring countries. You see, what we are embarked upon as the ruling party and government of the day, is to make sure that Ghanaians benefit from a “Green Democracy” of the kind experienced in the most advanced of democracies, excluding Donald Trump’s America, of course.

On the latter count ought to be vividly recalled Mahama Ayariga’s fratricidal railroading of Mr. Adamu Sakande, the New Patriotic Party’s Parliamentary Candidate who handily defeated the Little Dramani fellow bandit in the Bawku-Central Constituency in the 2012 General Election. Back then, Mr. Sakande, whose mother, we were told, was a bona fide Ghanaian citizen, was politically convicted and jailed for holding multiple Ghanaian and foreign passports. Now, Mr. Iddrisu would have Ghanaians believe that dual citizenship is the normative test of one’s eligibility to vote in the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana. What chutzpah!

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