“I have told you that if this country should collapse, those who caused it all will face our wrath. We shall start from their homes…
I know where all of them live… when we finish with them, then we shall close and come back to govern this country because they don’t have the nation at heart… They should know that the E.C. is insulated and Article 45 makes it very clear… Look at how your junior judges are taking bribes… goats and GH¢100…
You junior judges…should have resigned… You can’t introduce a fight for us in this country. We are the youth and we won’t sit down for you to run down the country. You old people, you are square pegs in round holes.”
Alistair Tairo Nelson (41)
Muntie FM hosted by
Salifu Maase (a. k. a Mugabe)
June 29,2016
ALISTAIR TAIRO NELSON, GODWIN AKO GUNU AND SALIFU MAASE (a. k. a Mugabe) may have one common asset: youthfulness. So had the ‘Murder Squad’ of 30th June, 1982, and as reported in the ‘Final Report of the Special Investigation Board (Kidnapping and Killing of Specified Persons) (121):
“By 9pm on 30th June, 1982, the ‘Murder Squad’ had assembled at Broadcasting House. The squad was made up of L/Cpl S.K. Amedeka, L/Cpl Michael Senyah, Johnny Dzandu, and Tony Terkpor. They were all dressed in N.T smocks and were heavily armed. They stood by the Fiat Compagnola jeep, cream in colour, which had been released by Amartey Kwei for the operations.” The rest is too gory and gruesome to recall: people at table after a hard day’s work or resting or suckling a child, whisked away; shot and burnt!
The Ghana Bar Association have instituted the ‘Martyrs Day’ in commemoration of the gruesome murder of Mr. Justice Fred Poku Sarkodie, Mrs Justice Cecilia Koranteng Addow, Mr. Kwadwo Agyei Agyapong, all judges of the High Court, and Major Sam A. Acquah, a retired army officer.
On Thursday, 30th June, 2016 at the St. George’s Church, in Kumasi, Francis Koffie, Esquire, President of the Ashanti Regional Branch of the Ghana Bar Association read at the 34th anniversary of the Martyrs’ Day: “…year by year we have celebrated this day to commit ourselves to the entrenchment of the rule of law in our land. Over the past several weeks, we have received reports of incidents that have the potential of subverting the rule of law in our nation….”
In Shakespeare’s King Henry (Part 2) the hatred for the arcana and complexity of lawyers and judges’ profession is spurned by Cade, the demagogue who has a vision of a quasi-communistic social revolution, is able to court the support of Dick, the butcher, among others. Jack Cade extols the assistance of his supporters: “I thank you, good people- there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.” Dick in his reply says: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
In 1994, an estimated 1,000,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda. The 9% Tutsi population and Hutu moderates were systematically eliminated in what appeared to be ethnic cleansing by the predominant Hutu who constituted 90% of the 10 million population. Between 200,000 and 500,000 women were raped resulting in the birth of over 20,000 bastards.
The Tutsis were depicted to be people who had stolen everything from the Hutus, justifying their elimination. Radio Stations were used to propagate the ‘Ten Hutu Commandments’ and Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines’ (RTLMC) exhorted the Hutus to: “cut the tree”, “finish the work” for “the graves are not yet full” for “the cockroaches”
At a memorial conference, Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General regretted his inability to stop the killings. As an African, holding such a high office, perhaps he could or should have done something more than he did. General Romeo Dallaire, the Force Commander of the UN Peacekeeping mission for Rwanda had dispatched the ‘Genocide Fax’ to the UN Headquarters in New York in which he had exposed the ethnic Hutu extremists of distributing stockpiled arms to the Interhamwe militias. In the fax, he had stated in French: “Peux ce que veux. Allons-y (where there is a will, there is a way. Let’s go.) There appeared later to be neither the will nor the way, and the U.N. stood by as the pogrom continued.
Why do we learn history: we get an understanding of how the society we live in, came to be; and, then get an appreciation of the fact that the past causes the present, and the present will definitely cause the future. At the basics, we learn history to pick lessons that will enable us to mould the future – that is, to avoid making the same mistakes twice.
But do we learn anything from history? This is a paradoxical question, or even rhetorical. Will Alistair Nelson be reading this piece? Does he have the capacity to appreciate history? What are his background, his principles and goals?
The Association of Magistrates and Judges of Ghana, in a news conference, expressed through the President of the Association, Justice Dennis Adjei that: “The utterances tend to put fear in the judges and magistrates of Ghana who are vested with judicial power under the Constitution.”
It is an unfortunate coincidence that these comments had been made just the time the Bar Association were celebrating the 34th anniversary celebration of the murder of the three high court judges and a retired army officer under the watch of the erstwhile PNDC government which was headed by Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings who stated on hearing of the murders: “We condemn from the depths of our hearts, and assured the nation that we would do all we could to trace and deal with the criminals, “whoever they are and whatever their motives in accordance with the democratic laws of this country.”
We are still waiting to hear from the National Media Commission and the Peace Council. Perhaps they are lacing their boots and assembling their arsenal to deal decisively with the vituperations of Tairo, Godwin and Salifu. Their deafening silence is a matter of grave and great concern.
We may be hesitant about pre-judging the issues. But the least the whole nation should do will be to condemn, in no uncertain terms, these unwarranted attacks. Tairo to marry the Chief Justice. I.K. Gyasi would say, Haba! During the PNDC days, J.J. Rawlings was a smashing young man in his thirties, younger than Tairo. When old men are being counted now, he would be in the group, now approaching seventy, with grandchildren. Given the next thirty years Tairo will be being called grandpa, and he should pray he is not caught ‘parking’. The grand children of the present ‘old men’ will have a name for him. As for the goats and GHc100, let Tairo and others who think like him send their children to school and learn to become judges and get a not-too discerning trio to trap him, then he would understand. I will be afraid of living under a Tairo, Gunu and Salifu government.
Margaret Mead, the Social Anthropologist, in her book ‘And Keep Your Powder Dry (An Anthropologist Looks at America—1942) says: “There is no necessary connection between warfare and human nature. Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive”. We may choose from the two to mould our society.
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