Kofi Boakye Hangs

*As Police Council plays ‘chaskele’ with Kufuor’s edict

THE GHANA POLICE Council has decided to tactically refrain from endorsing the decision by immediate past President John Agyekum Kufuor that on-leave Commander of Police Operations, ACP Kofi Boakye, should be reinstated into the Police Service with full benefits.

The Council has instead decided to play a tactical game of not endorsing the decision by waiting for a new Council expected to be constituted by President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills to decide on the fate of the heavily-built police capo.

The decision on Kofi Boakyes’s reinstatement, which was expected to take immediate effect, was announced in line with numerous annoucements made by President Kufuor barely 12-hours before he left the executive office of the land on January 6, this year.

According to Mr Frank Agyakum, former Deputy Minister of Information and a spokesman for the former NPP government transitional team, the decision was taken because the state had no interest in pursuing the case.

The last minute announcement by the former president for the reinstatement of the former Police Commander of Operations was, however, received with mix reactions from sections of the public. While many felt it was long overdue because the state had unduly sanctioned him without any incriminating evidence, some felt he was being given an underserved privilege.

Source at the Police Council told the Gye Nyame Concord newspaper that though the former president had the prerogative to issue such directive, the Council believes that the directive, in this instance, was badly timed.

The source said some members of the Council at their meeting rejected the request on the grounds that the letter was address to the Chairman and not the Council as a body.

They argued that past requests from the presidency or the Attorney General’s office on reinstatement of personnel who have been alleged to have violated police service regulations were addressed to the Council as a whole through the Chairman and not to the Chairman alone.

‘But in this instance, either through haste or for whatever reason, the presidency addressed the letter to the Chairman,” the source emphasized.

As a result, many of the Council members expressed misgivings about the timing of the relief and decided to withhold the request until a new Council is reconstituted by the Mills administration.

The source, however, explained that the new Police Council may be influenced to institute internal service discipline procedures against Kofi Boakye on the basis of the Georgina Wood Committee’s report.

Consequently, when the former Police Director of Operations reported for work last Monday, January 12, 2009, he was informed he would have to wait till his fate is determined by a new Police Council.

A spokesperson for ACP Boakye, Joe Debrah, later told Joy FM that the Police Service would have to find a way of utilizing Mr. Baokye’s capacity to the fullest given the fact that he is now a qualified lawyer.

Besides, ACP Boakye has already waited for sometime so he could wait awhile for the new Council to decide his fate, he said.

Kofi Boakye was called to the Ghana Bar some time last year after topping his class as the best student.

Kofi Boakye was asked to proceed on leave in 2006 following a recommendation by the Georgina Wood Committee, then headed by Ghana’s current Chief Justice before she became the head of the nation’s Judiciary.

Following the recommendations by the Georgina Wood Committee, which investigated the loss of 77 parcels of cocaine aboard the MV Benjamin ship, Kofi Boakye, then the Director in Charge of Operations of the Ghana Police Service was briefly arrested by security agencies following recommendations that he faced charges for the appropriate offenses under the laws of Ghana.

Efforts to get the Police Public Affairs to comment on the allegations were not successful