By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Feb. 13, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
For me, the gruesome and brutal murder of Mr. Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu comes as what Mr. William Shakespeare once described as the “Unkindest cut of all,” rather than a facile occasion for vacuous tribute paying, as one or two opportunistic Ghanaian journalists have had occasion to do these past couple, or so, days since the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa-North was savagely stabbed to death in the sacred privacy of his Shiashie residence in Accra. The date was Feb. 9, 2016. And it was a Tuesday. Another date to remember with great sadness is Feb. 4, 1965. And the latter day was, of course, a Thursday.
Mr. Danquah-Adu and I did not physically know each other, but it is quite certain that we knew about one another; for the Akan are fond of saying that “Blood is thicker than water.” Mr. Danquah-Adu was one of my Kyebi-Adadientem relatives. The parliamentary seat of Akyem-Abuakwa North, which he had held for quite a considerable while, was also being hotly contested by a “local” representative of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), whose original holder of the seat had been able to do so only because in 1992, the Adu-Boahen-led main opposition New Patriotic Part (NPP) had injudiciously decided to boycott the very first Fourth-Republican general election, thus rendering the country a virtual one-party state.
Now what I am interested in here, more than anything else, both as a blood relative of the deceased and a justice-loving Ghanaian-born thinker, poet, author, scholar, journalist, educator and citizen – “dually speaking” – is that the alleged killers of Mr. Danquah-Adu are promptly arraigned before a legitimately constituted court of the land and presented with the inalienable opportunity and human right to defend themselves. This is the reason why I have decided not to rush to any prejudicial and speculative judgments, inferences and conclusions until all the facts, as ably and expertly assembled by our law-enforcement agents, are in.
I was therefore not about to enter any discursive fray over whether Mr. Stanislav Xoese Dogbe, President John Dramani Mahama’s Communications Director, had been the criminal mastermind behind the savage and decidedly primitive murder of Cousin Danquah-Adu, until Mr. Dogbe himself issued a social-medium statement luridly and callously seeking to trivialize the enormity of the widely publicized suggestion that it would not be altogether far-fetched for anybody to either infer or conclude that the man who was recently reported to have brutally assaulted a Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) reporter, with the evidently tacit complicity and/or approval of President Mahama, had also masterminded the brutal and strategic liquidation of Mr. Danquah-Adu (See “I Didn’t Kill JB Danquah – Stan Dogbe” Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 2/12/16).
Here also, I am less interested in the fact of whether, indeed, Mr. Dogbe had had a hand in the early morning apparent assassination of the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament (MP) for Akyem-Abuakwa North. What I am far more interested in is whether, indeed, as widely reported by the national media, notably including the state-owned Daily Graphic, that Mr. Dogbe had at any point in time threatened the life of Mr. Danquah-Adu. And also under precisely what circumstances such threat or threats were issued. And if it turns out that, indeed, Mr. Dogbe had engaged in any untoward verbal exchanges with Mr. Danquah-Adu shortly before the brutal stabbing death of the latter, the public has an inviolable right to know about the exact contents and nature of such exchanges.
Such knowledge would enable members of the general public to have a fairly objective view of the political climate and circumstances leading to the murder of the renowned chartered accountant. It would also enhance the credibility of investigations for Nana Akufo-Addo, perhaps the most prominent relative of Mr. Danquah-Adu, at the moment, to call for the immediate involvement of the U.S. Federal Investigations Bureau (FBI) and the British intelligence agencies. The Mahama government must not be trusted with the protection of the integrity of this highly sensitive case. The President has called the slain man “a friend,” but it is not clear precisely what kind of friendship he was talking about.
Then also, Mr. Dogbe’s widely reported tantrum at the suggestion that he may have had a hand in the primitive and brutal assassination of Mr. Danquah-Adu does not get us anywhere. What matters here is that Ghanaians get to the very bottom of the circumstances leading to the unnatural demise of Mr. Danquah-Adu, 51 years almost to the day of the equally brutal assassination of Dr. J. B. Danquah, Mr. Danquah-Adu’s globally renowned and distinguished grandfather and the undisputed Architect of Ghana, through the use of Nazified South African-based Eastern European toxicology specialists, by President Kwame Nkrumah at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison.
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
