What a mess we find ourselves in
Today is a very sad day, the state funeral of Major Maxwell Adam Mahama killed in the north-western part of the Central Region. A day after his tragic death, another citizen of this country, a woman, was also lynched as a witch in the north of the country.
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And earlier this week, another man met his death at Fetteh Kakraba also in the Central Region, apparently for stealing GH¢1.50 from a wayside vendor. These horrible events have been seized on by enthusiastic amateur psychologists spewing copious psychobabble as proof of our love for mob justice.
This week has also seen the inexplicably cruel punishment meted out to our most famous human rights lawyer, Francis Xavier Sosu, for touting and advertising himself as such, in this age of the Internet and social media, in the year of our Lord 2017.
I suppose all the members of the panel who have deprived him of his means to feed himself and his family for the next three years are either known via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or other platforms available to us in 2017. Indeed, I have promised myself to locate the publication by the chair of the panel, Justice Akuffo, on the invasion and adoption of technology into the process of adjudication, and read it from cover to cover.
This week also happened to be the week in which June 4 fell, albeit on a Sunday, so President J. J. Rawlings also spoke. Very interesting things he had to say, but irrelevant to constitutional rule.
Very senior lawyer Mr Sam Okudzeto, who is also a well-known human rights lawyer in this country did not surprise when he was reported in the media as defending this harsh sentence.
I was not surprised because he had earlier, on his nomination to the Council of State, advanced the curious position that he would fight for the advice given by the council to be binding and enforceable on the President, when the constitution states clearly that the council’s role is to advise.
All that can be said is that such judgements and opinions show the wide gulf between generations in this country and the massive impact of technological advancements on the old and ancient ways of doing things. All lawyers, and other professionals, who are on LinkedIn, for example, are advertising themselves, because that is the purpose of that platform.
June 4
President Rawlings seems to forget that he actually is a former President of this country, and not a mere citizen. We all misrepresent facts when we link the success of the June 4, 1979 mutiny which ended as our shortest government, to him alone. He had nothing to do with events of that day, but he was the inspiration of the soldiers who struck, who had heard him at his trial for an attempted coup earlier on May 15, 1979.
His position as founder of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), however, emanates from the exigencies of constitutional civilian rule 13 years later. No one in this country today can even dream of doing what the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) did or achieved.
It is even more ridiculous when commentators say and he implies that he wants his party back. For what? He can never be anything in this country again apart from being a former President, courtesy of the Fourth Republican Constitution he signed into law in 1992.
Trial of suspects
On the upcoming prosecution of those arrested in connection with the murder of Major Mahama, I am expecting the Attorney-General herself, or any of her two deputies, to personally lead to show the seriousness that our government attaches to this horrific act. Nevertheless, I am certain as night follows day, that the suspects will not get a fair trial in this country.
Amateur psychiatrists and psychologists, aided by so-called pastors and men of God, have already espoused a false theory of mob justice being the ultimate culprit, as if someone is lynched everyday in this country, and our smart phones are always awash with gory images and videos of lynchings.
The fact of our universal revulsion which contradicts this psychobabble is blissfully ignored. I am not a mobster, I would not be tempted to join a mob bent on killing even a mad dog in my neighbourhood; and so are the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians. That is why we are all so shocked.
The intent of these psychobabblers is to deaden and dull the guilt of the suspects, make us all feel guilty, so that we do not ask legitimate questions about the immediate and remote causes of this horrible invasion of our consciousness. And of course, I disagree with the family-inspired ban on the publication and circulation, via social media, of images and videos of this deed.
It is what has awakened us to the need to arrest beastly behaviour of this sort, and is invariably free speech, which my readers know I believe in completely. You never know when the powers that be will seek an abridgement of this sacred right on the basis of untenable reasons.
The remote and immediate causes of the Denkyira-Obuasi and Fetteh deaths, and that of the 67-year-old woman, can be found in the violent political messages we gleefully and freely make, unmindful of the consequences, around election periods.
There are serious national politicians who distinguished themselves by saying the most blood-curdling things about the army, police and other security agencies and agents, and even about voters for other political parties. The refusal of the police to deal with such people established the atmosphere of impunity in which serious and mild infractions take place today. I submit forcefully, and without equivocation, that this is the location of the source of our national grief.
Compensation
Back to the late Major Mahama. A better recompense by President Akufo-Addo would have been for our government to declare the children as wards of the state up to after their graduation from university, as was done to a secondary school mate of mine who died recently, who suffered grievous burns from a plane crashing on his primary school in Cape Coast in the time of President Nkrumah in the First Republic. The government should have provided the young family with a house, which would be their most pressing need after today’s funeral.
To mark this day of mourning, let me intone once again; Rest in perfect peace Maxwell Adam Mahama, Major of Infantry of the Ghana Army. May your extremely painful demise be a lesson to all of us.