On 42 years commemoration: If NDC founders didn’t fiendishly harm the judges, who did?

On June 30, 1982 (forty-two years ago), three eminent High Court Judges and a

prominent Army Officer were barbarically murdered by some mindless stooges of

PNDC for carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.

If you look deeper, history is broad yet deep, that binds the core existence of the world. Hence, history keeps records of events that happened.

History is a lesson in the past but can also be the greatest regret of the future. Yet the reason there is history is because of the events that were created by man (Hughes 2010).

“June 30, 1982, continues to remain a dark spot in the nation’s political history and a nightmare for all judges in the country after the three High Court Judges, namely, Mr. Justice Fred Poku Sarkodie, Mrs. Justice Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, and Mr. Justice Kwadwo Agyei Agyapong, as well as a retired army officer, Major Sam Acquah, were callously murdered under strange circumstances at the Bundase Military Range in the Accra Plains, after being abducted on the night by some unidentified assailants (rawafrica.com).”

The story is told that in their desperate attempt to impose themselves on Ghanaians, the founders of the NDC disgustingly took arms and succeeded in overthrowing the constitutionally elected government of Dr. Hilla Limann on December 31, 1981.

The founders of the NDC formed a government they called the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and appointed Rawlings as its chairman.

In their attempt to get rid of the so-called sleazes and corruption, many Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for apparent insignificant offences.

Market women were regrettably stripped naked in broad daylight and whipped for allegedly hoarding their products or selling them at high prices. While their male counterparts were wickedly shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offenses that would not even warrant a police caution in a civilized society.

Regrettably, three eminent High Court judges and a prominent Army officer were callously murdered by some mindless apologists of the PNDC on June 30, 1982.

Investigations revealed that all three judges were sitting on review cases brought by citizens disgusted over the treatment meted out to them by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, which the military junta formed after June 4.

The judges dutifully ordered the release of persons who had been unlawfully sentenced to long terms of imprisonment during the despotic rule of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

The Army Officer, Major Sam Acquah, was the head of administration who signed dismissal letters for some GIHOC workers, including one of the murder suspects, Joachim Amartey Kwei, whose services were terminated for invading and destroying property at the Parliament House.

Subsequently, the PNDC fatuous apologists savagely murdered the three eminent High Court judges and the Army Officer because their judgment did not go in their favour.

The Special Investigation Board (SIB), however, concluded that the abduction and murder were a diabolical plot orchestrated by and with the connivance of the members of the Provisional National Defence Council, who later metamorphosed and formed the NDC in 1992.

As a matter of fact, Ghana’s coup d’état days under the founders of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) could be likened to: “in the China of “the Great Helmsman,” Kim Il Sung’s Korea, Vietnam under “Uncle Ho," Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah.”

May their souls rest in perfect peace.

Damiri fa due due due!