As usual, I read Martin A B K Amidu’s characteristically convoluted prolix on the ongoing proceedings and the battle surrounding the suspension of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo with a heavy dose of skepticism and absolutely no expectation of any meaningful purveyance of any morally redeeming or enriching lessons or thoughts. In the end, any critically thinking and civically responsible and objective reader and progressive-minded Ghanaian citizen is left with a withering sense of dêjà-vu and an unimpeachable appreciation of why the former Akufo-Addo-appointed Independent Special Prosecutor’s home province of the Upper-East Region continues to boil over with the most scandalous degree of internecine intertribal warfare of the most primitive and inexplicably horrific barbarism (See “A Superior Court Justice Has No Constitutional Right of Resignation after a Prima Facie Case in a Removal Petition” Modernghana.com 5/9/25).
Obviously, what the longest-serving former late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-appointed Deputy Attorney-General and Deputy Minister of Justice meant to say and imply by the afore-referenced caption of his verbally overdriven legalese submission is that, it is decidedly out of character and season and/or not in synch with the law of retribution for a superior or an apex court judge or jurist brought up on charges of professional misconduct to be permitted by the appointing authority – in this particular instance, President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama – to tender her resignation well in advance of any determination of whether or not any wrongdoing or crime has been committed by the prime target of summary suspension or interdiction by a committee established by the President to enquire into the veracity or the lack thereof vis-a-vis the same.
Consequently, the more appropriate caption for Mr. Amidu’s torturous mini-dissertation ought to have been as follows: “A Superior Court Justice Has No Constitutional Right of Resignation after a Prima Facie Case Has Been Established by a Removal Petition.” I guess any careful reader could aptly say that Martin Amidu is unarguably a genius writer of “Frafra-Glish” or “Frafra-English” than the sort of Received Globally Standardized Version of the English Language which many of us nonnative speakers of English were taught in school.
But what is even more significant to establish here is the fact that the man who is vehemently inveighing against any possibility of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo tendering her resignation to the President, well before the committee established to enquire into the petitions preferred against the President of the Supreme Court of Ghana has fulfilled its terms of reference, else the man against whom the same then Independent Special Prosecutor flew to the United Kingdom of Great Britain to collect forensically foolproof evidence established by the Criminal Fraud Courts of Britain, France and the United States of America, at the colossal fiscal expense of Ghanaian taxpayers, and to prosecute, only to obscenely thumb his nose at his extant employers on grounds that his passionately partisan affiliation with the institutional establishment of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) expressly prohibited Mr. Amidu from bringing to book or justice would, somehow, be accused of being complicit in the conspiracy to cause the removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo. Now, isn’t this kind of argument damn grotesque and farcical?
In the globally infamous case and scandal that became known as the “European Airbus SE Payola Racket,” the then former President and National Democratic Congress’ 2020 Presidential Candidate, Mr. John “Ouagadougou Ford Expedition-SUV Payola” Dramani Mahama, had been accused of the solicitation of the relatively diddly sum of €5 million, in a treasonable act of noncompetitive bidding on the purchase of some three military aircraft that may very well have cost Ghanaian taxpayers a humongous amount in the form of overpayment in excess of $200 (USD), according to estimates by some financial experts. Mr. Amidu and the previous Akufo-Addo government also had to pledge that the death penalty could not be invoked against Mr. Mahama.
In short, our contention here is that the man presently and literally calling for the head of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo to be delivered on a silver platter to a rabidly anti-judicial establishment President Mahama in a Pitoo Calabash, by way of a politically motivated partisan payback, has absolutely no moral and/or professional credibility and competence to warrant such a demand. The truth of the matter is that absolutely no law of the land expressly prohibits Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo from tendering her resignation to the President, if the Cape Coast-born Winneba native, from the Central Region, and a graduate of both the University of Ghana School of Law and the Golden State University, California, Law School, decides to do so immediately and of her own accord or volition.
Neither does the likelihood nor the possibility of the President refusing to accept such resignation nullify the inalienable constitutional right of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo to decide not to remain on the Apex Court or to continue to preside over the same. Once again, what we glean from his rather implacably venomous and politically motivated and shamelessly autocratic argument, is the temperament of a pathologically narcissistic man on the lookout for settling hallucinatory scores with absolutely no basis in factual reality.
Ironically, this tempestuous and insufferably self-righteous and self-proclaimed “Citizen Vigilante” is one and the same character who once, in the recent past, publicly and virulently accused President Mahama of stalking Mr. Amidu with National Security Agents in a bid to having the then recently dismissed Atta-Mills-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice liquidated.
His citation and recitation of the late Justice Kweku Etrew Amua-Sekyi Case of allegedly gross professional misconduct and the latter’s ultimate moral triumph over his morally self-righteous “revolutionary” enemies and detractors, as Chairman of Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission, under the tenure of President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor, only goes to show any pensive and critically thinking Ghanaian citizen that Martin Amidu is far more irredeemably fixated on raw and naked vengeance than sheer justice and the clinical application of the sacred laws of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.
For the foregoing reasons, the former Presidential Running-Mate of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills deserves more of our sympathy than our utter disdain or animus. He is obviously an incurably traumatized man who may also very well be indescribably tortured by the sullen demons of his past “revolutionary” misdeeds.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
May 9, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]
