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Will T.B. raise the dead and Tsikata bounce back?

The strange epidemic of national madness since December last year has now spun out of control, Jomo. 

I won’t be so demanding of whatever faith you may have in the prudence of the average human creature when it comes to matters of unnecessary risk-taking, as to expect you to believe it, but here is what transpired at the Supreme Court hearing of the 2012 presidential election dispute this week :

In the process of trying to establish evidence of criminal violations of the country’s electoral laws during the 2013 presidential elections, the bulk of purported evidence in the form of a couple of dozen boxes of the controversial, so-called polling pink sheets were carted from the Supreme Court to a venue for a counting, without anyone bothering at all to take an inventory of the boxes!

Can you imagine that? No, wait, Jomo. Let me start this from another angle:

On the blind side of the chaps at the Guinness Book of Records secretariat, one man actually stood  on his feet for 13 long days on the trot, while the rest of the nation remained seated listening to the Supreme Court hearing of the 2012 presidential election dispute-Tsatsu Tsikata, counsel for the Natioanl Democratic Congress.

Toward the end of his marathon cross-examination of the petitioners’ lead witness, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Tsikata filed a motion for an audit of the almighty pink sheets, which motion the Supreme Court granted.

Call it corporate benevolence: The renowned international accounting and auditing firm KPMG which we gather would have raked in a handsome US$ 100,000 in fees if it had charged the petitioners and respondents for the service, agreed to undertake the audit free of charge. The auditors then jumped to the task on the Supreme Court’s mandate and just when we thought the exercise was about to proceed and progress like clockwork orange, Tsikata shows up brandishing a big red flag and demanding a halt to the counting of the sheets.

Why? Counsel claims seven mysterious boxes, each stuffed to the brim with the so-called pink sheets, have been added to the original 24 boxes previously in the custody of the Supreme Court.

He says a criminal act has taken place and in the event, “compromised” the auditing of the pink sheets.

Before you ask what the hell is going in town, the NDC’s representative at the auditing of the pink sheets also comes along vigorously waving another flag. This one too is red. He declares that some of the boxes taken from the Supreme Court for the auditing are missing from the original number!

Counsel for the petitioners, Mr. Philip Addison, swears the respondents are “cooking up” tales to try and deny the petitioners a hearing of their case. The respondents do appear to have been given reason to raise suspicions, even though Tsikata’s claim about the seven mysterious boxes has not been confirmed:

Give counsel for the petitioners, Madam Gloria Akuffo’s account of what happened at the venue for the pink sheets audit a critical linguistics scan, and the following phrases jump out at you:

“NDC representative drew attention to the absence of a “C- category” of pink sheets”, “…parties rushed to the strong room and found the {missing} box”, “…another complaint was made about two missing boxes”, “parties found a box which was mislabeled…”  See? A picture is painted here of unexplained incidents that made the respondents suspicious, anaa..?

You can only hope that the court, the petitioners and the respondents have learnt lessons from the unnecessary and potentially dangerous confusion and will apply them as the rest of the hearing progresses.

Anyhow, Addison this week again managed to get into an argument with Presiding Judge, Justice Wiliam Atuguba over counsel’s attempt during a re-examination of Dr. Bawumia, to introduce evidence previously rejected by the bench after an objection by respondents’ counsels to their being tendered had been upheld.

Counsel’s persistence, some observers said, was borne of a bid to mend cracks which may have been inflicted by Tsikata on the credibility of the witness’s evidence, during his now legendary cross-examination of Dr. Bawumia.

That the hearing of the election dispute is slowly but surely drawing to a close will probably be more discernible during next week’s sitting. Whether Tsikata will return to re-examine key witness for the petitioners will depend on the outcome of the pink sheet audit or so he says.

Hey, Jomo, this Nigerian pastor called T.B. Joshua may well possess spiritual endowments light years beyond the reach of us mere mortals but then, the man and his Synagogue Church also appear to attract the great prosperity crowd:

Thousands of individuals in desperate pursuit of everything from prospective spouses, travel visas, cures for illnesses and fertility-inhibiting medical conditions, dramatic upward social mobility, success in all manner of personal pursuits and of course, plain old hard cash.

For the second time in about a month, a church service at T.B’s church off Spintex Road in Accra turned a long stretch of the road into a kilometers-long car park and left motorists on the route cursing under and above their breath. The greater bother though, was that the second time around, disaster struck last Sunday:

Word reportedly got round that water sanctified by T.B. to work miracles, was going to be dispensed to the prosperity crowd at a church service. The result was a stampede for the precious sesame fluid of wonders, that left four dead and up to 30 injured.

When news of the tragedy came, many agitated and angry people asked some funny and not-so-funny questions: Why did T.B. not foresee and avert it? Granted that he took a spiritual snooze, why did he, on waking up, not jet down pronto to KIA and proceed to wake up the dead? Then too, why does T.B. not employ his powers to put Boko Haram to rout so that Nigeria might have some peace? It was suggested that he might locate them on the impenetrable forest mountains of Adamawa, where they have taken refuge after fleeing last and this week’s military jet bombings of their bases.

Article by George Sydney Abugri

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