Akufo-Addo, Mahama boys jailed!
Sorry if I have sounded alarmist in the headline above. It is only a wish; has been for upwards of eight years. The wish becomes a supplication to God in the run-up to presidential elections or the first six months into a new government – when tomfoolery and murderous instincts, born of insatiable greed, are at their highest manifestation in this land.
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Before I go on, I want to use this piece to register my horror at the revelation that there is a Chief executive Officer (CEO) of COCOBOD who takes home GH¢70,000.00 a month!!! How easily the board of directors approved this obscenity while Ghana still relies on foreign loans to build cocoa roads; while our cocoa production has dropped to below 700,000 tonnes. This is criminal. I repeat: it’s obscene.
To come to my original beef this week, I nearly laugh as I observe that a major cause of our electoral and post-election mayhem is the yearning to be important. In Ghana, to be important, one must be in government, CEO of a juicy state enterprise, board member or Metropolitan, Municipal or District Chief Executive (MMDCE). That is for the high-to-mildly educated. Below them come the two categories: those with dreams of multi-million cedi contracts, and those who call the shots at state-owned toilets and toll booths.
My wish is born out of a personal conviction, that if Ghanaians wake up to newspaper headlines screaming about the imprisonment of Mahama and Akufo-Addo’s most loved campaign people and are amplified in the Morning Shows/Newspaper Reviews of the leading FM stations; if these NDC/NPP thugs come to the realisation that no power on earth can rescue them from jail, that would be the beginning of the end of the reign of terror.
I do not recall the details of how Boko Haram was born but I cannot forget the creation of those forces in the Niger Delta. At the time those angry youths in the region were daily issuing warnings and shouting on top of their voices against lack of access to benefits of national resources, they were not armed; at least, not to the teeth. Their press conferences and ultimatums sounded little more than mere annoyances by a “bunch of misguided youth”.
By the time both the State and Federal governments sat up, they had created a monster they could not control; monsters that had, only a few months or years previously, looked no more than a flea in a dog’s ear, a baby tiger incapable of anything worse than a whimper or whine.
I can look into a crystal ball today and prophesy that in another four years, we shall not be talking of NPP/NDC “thugs”; these little baby-alligators would have become terrifying monsters spreading destruction and laying waste every national asset they lay hands on.
The only way to prevent destruction by a monster is to stop it from growing.
It will start with the police. Did you see the video of the Kumasi Regional Security Council incident? The police stood petrified. From their faces, you could read the story of helplessness. They were not sure what to do, afraid they could be stepping on large toes.
It was not the first time. We saw it at Chereponi. We saw it at Odododiodio. It happens when the divisional police boss is not sure what the regional capo’s wish is concerning the matter. Apparently, the regional capo does not know what the wishes of the IGP are, and the IGP is silent because he has just been appointed by a President who belongs to the ruling political party and who must be pleased at all times even if the state burns.
The IGP knows that the frown on a President’s face is not the same as anger; that the President may condemn all he can, but it is only hot air which will soon cool off, and the IGP is supposed to know that the President is not heading a revolution which eats, or can afford to eat, its own babies.
The IGP knows that the President himself may not know the full story - that some over-zealous party officers at constituency, regional or national level may have opened their mouths too wide and made a few promises in the heat of the electioneering.
My wish, therefore, is that the police divisional commander, assured of security of tenure, will give the order to arrest the hoodlums and go ahead to put them before court. Thankfully, in President Akufo-Addo’s regime, all of these have been done, so far. The rest lies in the bosom of the judge or magistrate.
It is important that it should be a jail term – no option of a fine, because the political parties are too rich for any fine. Surrogates will be found to have the fine paid.
My hypothesis is this: no matter how wild the Azorka Boys or Invisible Forces are, they are human beings. The prospect of six months or more in jail will tame them. Finding themselves in jail, thinking of the helpless state of their wives and children whose visits soon start becoming irregular and few, they will begin to think – no party is worth going to jail for.
Perhaps the only mitigating thought is the assurance of a presidential pardon. You may call me names, but somehow I believe that President Akufo-Addo (if he is the same Akufo-Addo) will not issue pardons.