I sincerely don’t blame Justice Kweku Tawiah Ackaah Boafo, of the Accra High Court, for handing down a judgment in the Exton Cubic vs. The Republic of Ghana in favor Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the younger brother of former President John Dramani Mahama. There was an absurdist edge to the ruling in Beckettian parlance, because Justice Ackaah Boafo also categorically noted that the proprietor of Exton Cubic had illegally acquired his mining concessionary license for the township of Nyinahin, in the Asante Region. This, of course, is another way of saying that naked nepotism may very well have determined that the younger Mr. Mahama would be wrongfully granted permission by his elder brother’s government to wantonly lay waste, Galamsey fashion, to our otherwise pristine forestry and water resources.
Mr. Ibrahim Mahama took his patently vacuous case to the Accra High Court shortly after Mr. John Peter Amewu, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, revoked Exton Cubic’s illegally acquired concessionary license. The Attorney-General wants the Supreme Court to nullify Justice Ackaah Boafo’s verdict, because it flagrantly violates Act 703 of the Constitution, which clearly states that “The Minister [of Lands and Natural Resources], acting on behalf of the President [of the Republic] and on the recommendation of the [Lands] Commission may grant, revoke, suspend or renew mineral rights in accordance with this Act.” Justice Ackaah Boafo had curiously ruled that Mr. Amewu had absolutely no authority to revoke the license illegally acquired by Exton Cubic under the watch of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress.
I personally don’t fault Justice Ackaah Boafo for the issuance of his ineluctably scandalous ruling, because in the case of Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings vs. Nii Armah Ashitey – if memory serves yours truly accurately – Justice Ackaah Boafo made the sagacious and morally righteous decision that at the time that she caused her name to be put on the ballot as a parliamentary candidate for the Klottey-Korle Constituency in Central-Accra – actually it was Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the longest-serving General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress who put Dr. Agyeman-Rawlings’ name on the ballot – the eldest daughter of former President Jerry John Rawlings was not a paid-up member of the National Democratic Congress.
Shockingly but not altogether unexpectedly, the Wood Supreme Court overruled Justice Ackaah Boafo without offering any compelling or logically sound rationale for doing so. The latter ruling may very well have sent a spine-chilling and an unmistakable signal to the otherwise competently methodical high court judge to watch his back in all cases involving the movers-and-shakers of the National Democratic Congress that were brought before his bench. Fortunately, in the present instance, the appellant is the Attorney-General, working on behalf of the government of the day in a highly sensitive matter that verges on the very long-term existence and survival of the Ghanaian citizenry at large, to wit, the wanton and predatory degradation and destruction of the country’s landed, forestry and water resources.
As of this writing, the Supreme Court had yet to rule on the question of whether Exton Cubic was entitled to holding on to its illegally – and some even say, criminally – acquired concessionary license, or that the Lands and Natural Resources Minister acted squarely within the bounds of the law, when Mr. Amewu summarily revoked the license of Mr. Ibrahim Mahama. One fervidly hopes that condign justice will ultimately be delivered in favor of the far superior interests of the Ghanaian citizenry at large.
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