You see, the problem that Martin A B K Amidu, the Akufo-Addo-appointed former Independent Special Prosecutor, has in cavalierly presuming to scandalously impugn the moral and the professional integrity of Retired Chief Justice Sophia Abena Akuffo, is that it was President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama who personally handpicked the erudite legal maven and Akufo-Addo relative to sit as a bona fide member of the Ghana National Council-of-State. And by the way, the selection and the appointment of Justice Akuffo for a seat on the Council-of-State was not totally without controversy or resistance, as some diehard stalwart members and operatives of the country’s ruling party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), vehemently protested the move (See “The Timing of the Debate about the Unfairness of the Removal Provision of the Chief Justice Interferes with the Pending Petitions” Modernghana.com 5/16/25).
Now, what the preceding observation means is that President Mahama recognized something emulative and worthy of recognition and appropriation about the intellectual and the professional stature and caliber of the former Chief Justice, for the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, to have been adamant and insistent on selecting Ms. Sophia Akuffo to serve on the statutorily non-binding presidential advisory body that is the Ghana National Council-of-State.
Consequently, it is fundamentally immaterial and absolutely devoid of merit for the Frafra native, from the Upper-East Region, to call the integrity of the prime target of his tirade into question, unless, of course, the Atta-Mills-fired Attorney-General and Minister of Justice also wants to claim or assert that the decision by the former Arch-Lieutenant of the late President John Evans “Atta-Woyome” Mills to appoint Chief Justice Emerita Sophia Abena Boafoa Akuffo to serve on the Council-of-State abjectly lacked merit and integrity.
We need to also remind our readers that Mr. Martin A B K Amidu is the same person who, scarcely a decade ago, virulently accused President Mahama of thirsting for his blood and tracking his every move in and out and around his private residence in Accra, Ghana’s capital, with operatives from the National Security Agency (NSA), in a surreptitious and a surefire bid to having the plaintiff liquidated, simply because the former Presidential Running-Mate of the late President Mills had dared to literally spill the beans on his former boss, vis-a-vis the globally infamous GH¢ 51.2 Million Woyome Mega-Heist.
In short, in Martin Amidu, Ghanaians have a mentally and a psychologically unstable character of volatile and extreme contradictions who cannot be taken seriously. You see, when this insufferably cantankerous self-styled “Citizen Vigilante” had the prime opportunity to royally nail Citizen Mahama in what became globally known as the European Airbus SE Payola Racket, armed with forensically foolproof evidence provided him by the Criminal Fraud Courts of three countries, namely, the United States of America, Great Britain and France, Martin Amidu decided to do absolutely nothing primarily because in his own hallucinatory imagination and widely published words, the West-Gonja native, like the then Independent Special Prosecutor himself, was a Northern-Descended Citizen who avidly deserved his sympathy and blind solidarity.
And that is why one can only chortle with downright disdain and amused contempt to hear Mr. Amidu interminably harp on the refrain of Chief Justice Emerita Sophia Akuffo being “an Akufo-Addo Cousin.” The truth of the matter is that Yagbonwura Kwame Gonja Tumtumba was fully well aware of the familial kinship and blood relations between Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Ms. Sophia Akuffo. Which ought to have soberly informed the inveterate and the implacable critic of both the former President and his legal wit cousin that, contrary to what the man who royally bungled the trial of the alleged suspects in the grisly and the barbaric assassination of Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani, II, the Overlord of the Ancient Kingdom of Dagbon, that the consanguineal relationship between Justice Akuffo and Nana Akufo-Addo had absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with Mr. Mahama’s decision to appoint Ms. Akuffo to the Ghana National Council-of-State.
Then also, we need to highlight the fact that it was the Mahama Presidency or Jubilee House that flagrantly violated any oath or aura of in-camera privacy or secrecy surrounding the alleged removal petitions brought against Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo, by having both a report of the contents and the impeachment and removal petitions brought against our “Suspended” Chief Justice published on Social Media, well before the subject of intended removal had officially been notified about the same.
It is also not wholly accurate for Martin Amidu to imperiously assert that members of the Judiciary, especially the Chief Justice and his/her Associates on the Supreme Court, are not duly and legitimately elected. Such assertion reflects the critic’s woeful lack of any appreciable understanding of the procedural dynamics of the Judicial Branch of our Three-Pronged democratic governance system. The factual reality of the matter is that Justices of the Supreme Court are “Indirectly Elected” by our popularly elected Parliamentarians, the Representatives of the People, before whom they are vetted, confirmed and certified for duty. There is also absolutely no Article or Clause enshrined in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution that expressly precludes any member of the Council-of-State from freely, healthily and progressively participating in any robust debate in a public forum some of whose ideational proposals or outcomes are apt to positively and constructively shape the massively flawed 1992 Republican Constitution of Ghana.
Now, on the question of the purportedly kosher integrity of the Baffoe-Bonnie Committee established by President Mahama to hash out the so-called prima-facie evidence advanced for the removal of Chief Justice Gertrude Sackey-Torkornoo, we would rather not waste our precious time and breath embroiled in a needless and a pointless debate, especially when the man who stands to reap the maximum benefit from the removal of Chief Justice Torkornoo, namely, Acting Chief Justice Paul Kwadwo Baffoe-Bonnie, is also the Chairperson of the aforesaid Committee. As already pointed out, in at least a half-dozen articles written and published on this very issue, what is at stake here is the functional and the operational independence and the integrity of Ghana’s Judicial Establishment and Jurisprudence itself, and not necessarily the individual personality of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo.
Of course, President Mahama also stands to reap a bumper harvest from Chief Justice Torkornoo’s removal from the Apex Court, thus his abject disregard to systematically and meticulously follow the laid-down procedure for removing the Chief Justice, as poignantly and eloquently articulated by legal experts from the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) and the International Association for Women Lawyers (FIDA).
As well, it is also rather interesting that as of this writing, Yours Truly had chanced across a news story in which Retired Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, the very same legal maven whose noggins a then Dynastic-Candidate John Dramani Mahama luridly and intemperately demanded to be delivered to him on a silver platter, because the Nyinahin native, from the Asante Region, had dared to honestly and fearlessly call the results of the 2020 Presidential Election in favor of the real winner and not the wishful winner, had been appointed to the Board of Arbitration of FIFA, the International Soccer Association. You see, Martin Amidu has absolutely no sense of shame in flippantly presuming to insult the intelligence and the common sense of Ghana’s electorate and the citizenry at large.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
