Fat Chance, Tsatsu!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 16, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

He may well be a crackerjack attorney in his own right. But the fact of the matter is that Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata never gave himself the requisite chance to prove his legal mettle/métier to those who may really care to size up what this allegedly precocious personality has done with his talents. He did not give himself the necessary chance because Mr. Tsikata abandoned academia much too early to have made any worthwhile scholastic dent. For instance, he is not known to have published any substantial landmark essays, books or refereed articles in law reviews and journals to justify his admission to and studies at such globally renowned and prestigious institutions as Oxford and Legon. He spent most of his intellectually puissant years assisting the Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) establish the primitive “revolutionary” death squads that became known, through most of the 1980s, as People’s Courts and Public Tribunals.

As a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana’s Faculty of Law, Mr. Tsikata left his post without having secured tenure the way that remarkable legal lights like Profs. John Evans Atta-Mills and Mike Oquaye had done. And so clearly whatever Mr. Tsikata may claim as his most significant achievements in the legal discipline were incontrovertibly logged with the assistance of heavily armed men in Khaki uniform. We may also never know the number of cases decided in court in his favor under duress, or primarily on the fear of an “uncooperative” judge’s having to flee the country or being meted the kind of savage reprisals that greeted the three Accra High Court judges brutally slain, Trokosi Nationalist-Style, on June 30, 1982.
As for the bunk talk about Mr. Tsikata’s having won the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition hands down, the least said about it the better. Indeed, only the extremely naïve and the pathologically obtuse would believe that Messrs. Tsatsu Tsikata and Anthony Lithur had clinched any modicum of convincing victory before the William Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel that adjudicated the petition brought before it by Messrs. Akufo-Addo, Bawumia and Obetsebi-Lamptey. In a more advanced and civilized democracy, a criminal convict like Mr. Tsikata would have since long had his practice license revoked. He would even probably be still serving time in the stir house.

I also really don’t know in response to what line of questioning he reportedly told the Citi-Fm talk-radio program host that if he were approached by any of the key operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), with a request to represent either the party or any of its members in court, he would have absolutely no reservations, whatsoever, in doing so, provided that he deemed such a suit to be of merit. I don’t know what his criteria for deciding the merits of a case may be; and I really don’t care about the same, were the dear reader to ask me. For at the end of the day, Tsatsu’s best days are decidedly well behind him.

And to be certain, his best days were really not remarkably edifying by any stretch of the imagination. They were definitely coeval with unarguably the darkest period in our country’s postcolonial history. But he is laudably right to observe that no New Patriotic Party member or leader worthy of our respect and admiration would fathom having the man who helped Chairman Rawlings ruin and/or destroy so many innocent and unsuspecting Ghanaian lives represent him/her in any legitimately constituted court of law in the country (See “I Don’t Mind Being NPP’s Lawyer – Tsatsu Tsikata” Starrfmonline.com / Modern Ghana.com 12/16/15).

It is also quite clear that the man, in the wistful twilight of his life, may well be looking to redeem himself in the eyes of the legion relatives of his victims, as well as the country’s historiographical memory at large. He must not be cheaply afforded such indisputably undeserved opportunity. Of course, he may well have the chance to represent and/or advocate for reprobate party poopers like Messrs. Charles Wereko-Brobby, Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, Paul Afoko, Kwabena Agyepong and Sammy Crabbe. And, oh, I almost forgot to add the name of the infamous Cretin-of-California (aka The-Idiot-of-Irmo, South Carolina).

Mr. Tsikata also claims that “in principle,” he has absolutely no problem with any of the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party. Well, he also has to tell the world whether, indeed, he has any problem (or qualms) with any of the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party “in practice.” He also claims to admire elderly statesmen like Mr. J. H. Mensah, whom he claims to have looked up to at one time or another. Well, this is the same man who once asked the ideological scions and blood relatives of Dr. J. B. Danquah to offer profuse encomiums to President Nkrumah because without the latter’s summary prison assassination of the globally acclaimed Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, Dr. Danquah would practically be a virtual nonentity today.