Opinions of Monday, 7 July 2008
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
Tsatsu's Sentencing is an Absolute Non-Issue
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In the heydays of both the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), a lot of Ghanaians stood in awe of him. Hardly because of his purported legal genius, for he was widely touted as, perhaps, the youngest Ghanaian to have graduated from the University of Ghana Law School, at 19 years old, but primarily because he was widely fingered as the brain behind the establishment of those bloody, kangaroo People’s Courts and Tribunals that destroyed so many, otherwise, diligent and productive Ghanaian lives.
He is also known to be the architect of the Fast-Track judicial system which he now so virulently decries and utterly disdains. And so it is quite understandable that Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata would be railing vehemently against his condign and embarrassingly long-overdue and piddling 5-year prison term.
Depressingly, his trial has taken more than 6 marathon years to conclude; and as Appeals Court judge Henrietta Abban rightly pointed out, Tsatsu Tsikata so theatrically and disdainfully toyed with the Ghanaian judicial system that the Court was, literally, becoming a classical circus act. Of course, what Justice Abban did not say, but may well have implied, is the fact that President Kufuor’s fervid contraction of “PARDONOSOMIASIS” may well have encouraged this Bête Noir of the Ghanaian judicial system to continue to grandstand and seemingly interminably script and perform his nauseatingly nose-thumbing acts in front of our august Republic. Even so, longevity, it has been wisely observed, has temporal limitations. And so this “Tsikatravesty” had to be deliberately conducted to its own logical demise.
What was also quite fascinating about the Tsikata verdict, is the fact that it provoked the basest instincts among the top-echelons of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). This was how an anonymous Daily Graphic reporter, writing under the caption “Tsatsu Gets Five-Year Jail Term” (New Ghanaian 6/22/08), recalled the NDC reaction: “After the judgment, and while Tsikata was facilitating his appeal, the Supreme Court premises was besieged by a crowd which included former President Jerry John Rawlings, Prof. Atta-Mills, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the December elections[,] and the [entire] hierarchy of the party.”
Of course, at another time and in another era, all that Chairman Rawlings would have done, would have been to secretly arrange the abduction, rape, assassination and conflagration of the body of Justice Henrietta Abban, with the deft complicity of the Tsikatas and Amedekas – a resplendent panoply or bloody tribal alliance of certified butchers of a surreal sort – and then with an innocent-looking and scrawny Chairman Rawlings, bloodshot eyes and all, storming the studios of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and, literally, lying through his cigarette-stained teeth to a stunned and traumatized, captive Ghanaian audience about how some Extraterrestrial Angels came and escorted Justice Henrietta Abban to where only the Prophet Elijah could find her charred remains.
Fortunately, this is the Twenty-First Century and the era of the ballot-box, not the AK-47 and The Green Book. Even so, these post-power traumatized NDC hoodlums and rabble-rousers continue to foolishly entertain the idea that, somehow, they still own the proverbial night, that they could, indeed, spook the hell out of even our most courageous and conscientious men and women of the bench. Still, isn’t it rather a pity and a crying shame that a purportedly legal wit like Prof. Atta-Mills would also daftly and docilely tug at the pants of a pistol-packing Monsieur Rawlings and charge into the hallowed hallways of the Ghanaian Supreme Court? For where Mr. Kufuor, deliriously angling for the proverbial “Oprah Effect” (OE), appears to be suffering from “Santa Clausiasis,” breaking prison cells and turning loose the most rabid of a corrupt politicians, Prof. Atta-Mills seems ready to bring down our very Supreme Court edifice, on account of a bloody kleptocrat whose sinister legal machinations may well have caused the deaths of more Ghanaians than any government in both our colonial and postcolonial history.
Being your stereotypical Okyeni – Adansi Pipim Nana, to be precise – I have, obviously, been smitten with Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata’s ability to hijack our country’s judicial system for so long. Still, I vehemently disagree with those who fault the timing of Justice Abban’s verdict. To be certain, Tsikata’s sentencing could not have come at a better time; if anything at all, I wouldn’t be unhappy if a future government decides to bring charges of “willfully causing financial loss to the state” against any of the major players involved in the Tsikata trial. For frankly speaking, I don’t think the man was worth half the expenditure that went into this protracted attempt to bringing him to justice; and, naturally, I don’t even believe that Tsikata was brought to any form of justice at all, considering the length of time, or actually the lack thereof, that it took Generals Acheampong, Utuka, Afrifa, Akuffo and the others – Yaw Boakye, Felli, etc. – to be blindfolded and trussed up for the neo-classical vibes of AK-47s at the Teshie Military Range.
As for this nonsense that was widely reported by the media, about Chairman Rawlings having bitterly wept in the wake of the Tsikata verdict, forget it! I mean, whoever heard of Ghana’s “Junior Jesus” being possessed of any tear glands? It makes one even more angry to suppose that good, old Providence would also endow this killer-machine with any human properties that the man has absolutely no use for? In fact, about the only moment that I thought I witnessed Joe Jato attempt to cry, was when he sat in front of CBS television cameras complaining bitterly to Ms. Diane Sawyer about how his father had callously dropped him among a people he could barely stand and vamoosed into the Scottish Highlands. That was sometime in 1988 or thereabouts. And boy did I really feel irredeemably mortified!
Anyway, what drew my attention to the existence of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata was when he appeared before the so-called Ghana Socialist League presuming to be cutting the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics down to size. And boy, did he sound and look daft and ugly! Other than that, whenever I think of the Tsikatas, particularly Kojo and Tsatsu, the first thing that comes to mind is the imperative need for the pathologically depraved to, literally, stew in their own brine.
And so last week Wednesday, Tsatsu, with a smirk on his face, stood in front of Justice Henrietta Abban stewing in his own brine and stupidly pretending as if it was all about a brazen witch-hunt, political persecution. But, hey, Mister what was it that you committed, but robbing a statutory industry – the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) – blind in order to tide over a private company – Valley Farms, using the former to guarantee a loan contract you fully well knew would deliberately not be satisfied?
You see, the problem with the P/NDC boys is that so facilely have they come to take our nation for granted that they, literally, seem to believe that they actually own our land! Else, how does Tsatsu Tsikata, an ordinary law lecturer at Legon, become Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation almost overnight?! And to recall the fact that my own, late paternal uncle, Mr. Kwame Okoampa, Chief Accountant of the Pioneer Tobacco Company (PTC), Takoradi, came within a hair’s breadth of getting arrested and summarily executed, for allegedly failing to stop some kleptocratic colleagues from dipping their fingers into the company’s till; and for something on the order of ¢ 5,000 to ¢ 50,000! The big boy had to flee for safety in Nigeria.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
