It is not clear to this author what he means, when the ill-reputed and much maligned legal lapdog of the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings caustically castigates former Akufo-Addo-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Godfred Yeboah-Dame, for having supposedly allowed himself to be wickedly and criminally used to destroy the lives and the livelihoods of tens and dozens of bona fide Ghanaian citizens (See “ ‘You allowed an 80-year-old Akufo-Addo to use you to destroy livelihood of old poor people’ — Edudzi slams Godfred Dame” Modernghana.com 2/16/25).
Mr. Kudzo Edudzi Tamakloe is reported to have made the foregoing vitriolic accusation on TV3’s “Keypoints” current affairs program. Now, What is especially fascinating to know about the self-righteous accuser is the readily accessible and verifiable fact that it was a wet-eared Mr. Edudzi Tamakloe and “Lt-Col.” Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia who led the arm-twisting compromising of the integrity of both the individual and the institutional establishment of the Supreme Court of Ghana, in order to have Mr. Rawlings’ eldest daughter, Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings foisted on the people of the Korle-Klottey Constituency, in Accra-Central, in the Greater-Accra Region, as their National Democratic Congress-sponsored Member of Parliament.
As the unimpeachably conscientious Accra High Court Judge who roundly rebuffed the boorish – or is “Boerish”? – attempt by the Rawlings Posse to flagitiously compromise his professional integrity and moral values categorically observed at the time, Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings was not even a registered and a dues-paying member of the National Democratic Congress at the time, having voluntarily and imperiously broken away from the NDC with her clinically megalomaniacal and pathologically self-entitled mother and Ghana’s longest-reigning First Lady, Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, to establish the ill-fated National Democratic Party (NDP).
But that Chairman Rawlings and General Mosquito, at the time, the dynastic General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, would succeed in intimidating and getting a majority of the Apex Court’s Judicatory Panel to succumb to the will of the terror-mongering Rawlings Posse, ought to have soberly informed a seemingly incurably haughty Mr. Edudzi Tamakloe about the definitive climate of terror almost irreparably established by the Rawlings-led sanguinary and extortionate juntas of, first, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and, subsequently, the even more criminally oriented and morally irredeemable and unspeakably kleptocratic and kleptomaniacal state-capturing junta juggernaut that was the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).
A historically and factually shy and dodgy Mr. Edudzi Tamakloe obviously needs to first acquaint himself with the welter of massive and indelible facts of the existential nightmare that was the reality of the political weather and climate of the immediate Pre-Fourth Republican Ghanaian Past before proceeding to make such an arrant fool of himself. Which is why even at the most charitable level, one can only pity this hotheaded and clinically unconscionable and morally bankrupt ignoramus and abysmally poor excuse of a lawyer and a human being, when Mr. Edudzi Tamakloe downright vacuously volleys the following salvo at his far more erudite and savvy ideological and political opponent, to wit, Attorney-General Emeritus Godfred Yeboah-Dame: “Godfred, where is your conscience, or do you have one? You allow an 80-year-old man to use you to destroy the livelihood of people.”
It is very obvious that the acerbic and morally self-righteous Yeboah-Dame critic needs some basic tutorials on what the so-called Rawlings Revolution was incontrovertibly about. And for the indispensable benefit of those of our readers who were either not yet born or were rather much too young to fully appreciate matters on the ground, the so-called Rawlings Revolution was absolutely no “revolution” at all in the globally accepted sense of the term but unarguably about the perennially planned and premeditated and long-term, systematically orchestrated destruction of Akan businesses and entrepreneurial genius, as well as the systematically calculated and criminally orchestrated ethnic cleansing of the Akan people and the domination of a predominantly Akan civilization and culture by the Anlo-Ewe Trokosi Nationalists of Sogakope and its environs.
Indeed, I could not help but explode with triumphant guffaws to see that other than the tailoring style of his Presidential-Inauguration Suit, absolutely every philosophical symbol and ancient literary or syllographical character or imagery represented in President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama’s get-up or traditionally tailored suit was of Akan origin. Now, that goes to show the Trokosi Nationalist Capos and Butchers and, to be certain, the entire global community at large, the unfathomable and the abysmal failure of the Rawlings Revolution. I have said this innumerable times before and hereby reiterate the same, once more, that “Ghana Is Quintessentially Akan and Akan Is Interchangeably Ghanaian.” We are incomparably a very accommodating people, which ought not to be facilely confused with our seemingly ready or easy pacification or erasability by our most inveterate and mortal enemies and neighbors.
To get a better picture or appreciation for the professional caliber of former Attorney-General Godfred Yeboah-Dame, one has to match up his ministerial and/or his executive performance with those of the likes of Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, Mrs. Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong and Messrs. Martin ABK Amidu and Ebo Barton Odro, at least two of whom had been widely alleged to have been involved in the Woyome Mega-Heist, in which GH¢51.2 million was literally lifted from the vaults of the Bank of Ghana with the criminal complicity of the then newly elected President John Evans Atta-Mills and, possibly, the insider’s knowledge of then Vice-President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama.
It has often been said that “Those who live in straw huts must be careful not to play with hurricane lamps.” It is quite certain that as a fallible species of humanity, Attorney-General Yeboah-Dame had obviously committed his fair share of blunders, as had also his aforementioned predecessors. Nevertheless, the appointment of Attorney-General Yeboah-Dame must have come as a proverbial breath of fresh air, at least for quite a considerable while, in ways that could not have been confidently said on behalf of nearly all of his immediate Mills-Mahama regime predecessors. Even the “Mahama Homeboy” and renowned investigative journalist Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni, has had a very recent occasion to question the comparative “Clearing Agent Credentials” of former President Akufo-Addo and both his immediate predecessor and successor.
The current Mahama-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, has been accused of blindly withdrawing cases brought against some stalwarts of the National Democratic Congress, including Dr. Cassiel Ato Baah Forson, the recently named Finance Minister, and Dr. Johnson Pandit Asiamah, the newly appointed Governor of the Bank of Ghana. Now, one gets the alarming impression that the Mahama 2.0 Government, as it were, is likely to amount to absolutely nothing more than merely pouring urine-stale wine into newly labeled garbage-reclaimed bottles. If the foregoing observation has validity then, trust me, Countrymen and Countrywomen, we are in deep trouble.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
February 17, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]
