Though I love Kwame Nkrumah so much and believe that he is the best president Ghana has ever had by far, I also accept that he made some mistakes and had his weaknesses as any other human being. A typical example of some of his mistakes is how he abused state power in handling the Kulungugu assassination attempt.

In the case of the Kulungugu trial, the special court presided over by then chief justice Sir Arku Korsah ruled that three of the five suspects, Dr Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, Nkrumah’s foreign minister, Tawia Adamafio information minister, and Hugh Horatio Crabbe, executive secretary CPP were not guilty of the charges and were acquitted and discharged. Unhappy with the verdict, Nkrumah sacked the chief Justice unlawfully and went to parliament where he knew he had majority to pass a law to begin a new trial. All three men who were initially acquitted and discharged were convicted in the second trial and sentenced to death. As if that was not enough, he used his powers to amend the constitution to allow him sack any judge at any level.

Though Ghana practices a democratic system of government, politicians have always abused their power and used loopholes in the system to oppress and victimize their opponents. What our first democratically elected president, Kwame Nkrumah did is what seem to be happening now in the Gregory Afoko case.

Afoko was charged with the murder of the former Upper East regional chairman of the NPP, Chirman Adams. His trial, just like that of the Kulungugu five has been ongoing for sometime now. Eventually, after listening to about 14 witnesses, the competent judge ruled that he must be granted bail. What we know is that, the state unhappy with the high court decision just like Kwame Nkrumah, appealed to stay the execution of the earlier order. Unfortunately the state was embarrassed as the appeal court judge upheld the earlier verdict by the high court. The state then went to another high court to seek that, Afoko is held behind bars. This is worse than what Kwame Nkrumah did over 40 years ago!!!

Like Nkrumah, there are worse autocrats and wounded folks hiding behind the rule of law and democracy just to settle personal scores. So many people the world over have been convicted wrongly in murder trials. It is therefore very important to allow institutions like the court and our highly competent and experienced judges do their work without any interference.

Let me tell you a short story. In 1959, sixty years ago, Steven Murray Truscott, a 14 year old Canadian boy was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of his classmate Lynne Harper. The prosecution argued amongst other things that Murray was the last person to see her alive and therefore was guilty of murder and was sentenced to death by hanging. After a public outcry his sentence was commuted to life in prison. On November 12, 1974, Murray was relieved from prison on parole. After many failed attempts to reopen the case to prove his innocence, Murray finaly got a breakthrough in 2001 and a new trial begun. On August 28, 2007, Murray was acquitted of all the charges. This is just one of the many examples of cases our experience and competent judges have learned from.

Whether you believe Afoko killed Adams or not, whether you think his brother, Paul Afoko was against Nana Addo or not, whether you even wish him dead or not is not important right now!!! Your emotions, expectations, suspicions, etc is not the law!!! What is important is the rule of law. Taking advantage of loopholes in the law to abuse your power is immoral. The government is clearly abusing it’s power in this matter. As it stands now, Gregory Afoko is a political prisoner and the state is behaving worse than Kwame Nkrumah did in the Kulungugu trial. You can use the law and still be a monster!!! If this happened under NDC, NPP, the all knowing party would have put on big suits in the scorching sun to speak big English. Injustice today must be  injustice tomorrow. #Dropthehypocrisy. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄