When I saw the news headline of the story reporting the temporary halting of the vetting of the recently nominated Appeals Court Jurist, Justice Kwaku Tawiah Ackaah-Boafo, for a long well-deserved seat on the august Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG), the first thought that flashed through my mind had to do with the historically unprecedented and veritably unconstitutional suspension of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo by, in the memorable words of the late President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, the globally acclaimed Founding-Father of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a “thoroughgoing corrupt” President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, and the landmark dismissal of the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia payback attempt to railroad the extant incumbent NDC-sponsored Parliamentary Representative for the Klottey-Korle Constituency, Accra-Central, by Justice Ackaah-Boafo, on the judicially unimpeachable grounds that not only was Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, the eldest daughter of the Founding-Father of the party and his wife Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, not a bona fide resident of the Klottey-Korle Constituency, even worse, the parliamentary seat-snatching Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings was also neither a registered member of the NDC nor a dues-paying member of the latter party in good standing.
Sadly but all too predictably, conspicuously abject Ghanaian disregard for the civilized and the democratic rule of law, as has become almost unique and peculiar to Chairman Rawlings and his hopelessly dependent subalterns, for the most part, led by then party General-Secretary Johnson “The Bui Dam Woyome” Asiedu-Nketia, and the globally infamous Rawlings’ lapdog, Godwin Edudzie-Tamakloe, would succeed in appealing to some lily-livered jurists on the Supreme Court to literally nullify the judicially unimpeachable verdict of Justice Ackaah-Boafo. It was definitely one of the most inglorious moments in Ghana’s judicial history.
As this author vividly recalls, it was the most despicable travesty of justice in Ghana’s Fourth Republic and possibly the entire postcolonial history of the country. This most flagrant display of judicial nullification and the unpardonably criminal abuse of power and influence would prompt a visibly frustrated and morally violated and conflicted Justice Julius Ansah, late, the sole dissenting jurist on the Apex Court’s Panel that presided over the Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings’ “Kawukudi” strong-arming of the judiciary, to bitterly remark that justice and the rule of law had been flagrantly violated by the Asiedu-Nketia Posse.
That the then-Retired President Rawlings had literally ridden herd over such unspeakable judicial travesty and the unpardonable abuse of power and influence, would permanently go down in history as one of the dozens of the most egregious and ignoble blotches on the leadership record of a politically and a revolutionarily self-righteous Chairman and, subsequently, President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings. Which was also why I could not help but snort and chuckle with amused contempt, recently, when Mr. Edudzie-Tamakloe so snootily presumed to impugn the leadership integrity of former Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia. I cannot readily recall what the entire to-do or bone of contention was about on this occasion. Not that it really matters within the present context, anyhow.
What I want to highlight here, by the way, is the inescapable fact that stentorian talk about leadership accountability and all, there is absolutely no gainsaying that it is this morally unenviable Social Darwinian Mindset that inhabits, colors and propels the motives and the political agenda of the entire leadership constabulary of the National Democratic Congress. Today, we have thuggish and shyster lawyers like Mr. Edudzie-Tamakloe entrusted with one of the most highly sensitive and highest-paying executive portfolios in the country. Which was also why I was not in the least bit amused to learn that somebody by the name of Anthony Kwabenya Rau had written and submitted a professionally damning petition against Justice Ackaah-Boafo to the Parliamentary Appointments Committee, that had caused the latter to almost instantaneously put the vetting of Justice Ackaah-Boafo on pause.
Fortunately, as of this writing, it had just been announced that the vetting and the confirmation of Justice Ackaah-Boafo for a seat on the Highest Court of the Land was back on track, as it surely needed to be (See “SC Nominee Justice Ackaah-Boafo Faces Appointments Committee Today After Petition Delay” Modernghana.com 6/20/25). But what especially enthused and elated Yours Truly in no mean or small manner and measure, was the description by the anonymous reporter of the afore-referenced news story, to the effect that Justice Ackaah-Boafo… is the last of the seven justices nominated by President John Dramani Mahama for elevation from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court.”
I would bet my proverbial bottom-dollar, however, that Justice Ackaah-Boafo is absolutely not in any way, whatsoever, the least qualified of the seven Appeals Court Judges recently nominated for seating on the august Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG). He is very likely the best and the brightest as well as the most experienced and most erudite of all the Big Seven Nominees to the SCOG by the man who once rather naively and artlessly confided to a BBC News Reporter that soliciting and accepting bribes was a staple diet of his leadership demeanor and culture. At the time that he made such a self-spiting confession, the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, was Vice-President and Arch-Lieutenant to the “Mysteriously Vanished” President John Evans “Atta-Woyome” Mills. So much for witch-hunting and character-assassinating frivolities, Malika Shamima Muslim.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
