It is obvious that Ghanaian officialdom learnt precious little (by way of useful lessons!), from the many dreadful stories recounted during the sittings of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), by victims of rogue police officers, prison warders and soldiers.
One would have thought that with the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money that it cost our country to fund the work of the NRC, some of the lessons from the hearings would at least have been incorporated into the training of the men and women who serve in our security services, by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime of President Kufuor.
If that were done, dear reader, would police officers, prison officers and soldiers not always be guided by the fact that we are a nation of laws and a constitutional democracy, which guarantees basic human rights for all citizens - and behave accordingly when interacting with the civilian population?
It is precisely because officialdom did not learn any useful lessons from that abomination and crimes-against-humanity-galore, in as far as the training of the men and women of our security services is concerned (and their re-orientation from serving under a brutal military dictatorship, to serving their country in a constitutional democracy), that a group of very senior police officers, could meet the father of a murder victim, Nana Yaw Ofori, behind closed doors, and like cynical American politicians of the early 20th century meeting in smoke-filled rooms, emerge with the most incredible of outcomes - safe in the collective bag-of-shame of the Ghana Police Service.
The investigation of the murder of Nana Yaw Ofori (who went to work for his employers, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) one Saturday and never returned home), by the James Town Police's Criminal Investigations Department (CID), had reached a point when the investigator was just about to arrest a suspect.
It was precisely at that point that the case was sent to the headquarters of the CID, at the Ghana Police Service's headquarters compound. Readers must note that on the following Wednesday after he failed to return home from work that Saturday, his body was subsequently found buried in a shallow grave by fishermen in a James Town beach. It was identified by his mother.
It is instructive that the complainant in the case, Nana Yaw Ofori's mother, who was late to the meeting at which it was decided that his body should be released to his family for burial (in line with his mother's wishes, it must be said), was not allowed to enter the room in which her son's fate was being sealed, and for all we know was officially going to end up as perhaps yet another police statistic: one of Accra's unsolved murder cases.
Yet, she was originally scheduled to attend the meeting. Traffic delayed her and prevented her from arriving on time for the meeting - to which the senior officers present, completely forgetting the recounting at the NRC, of countless stories of improper and unlawful behaviour by their fellow police officers, insisted that she couldn't attend, although she had originally been scheduled to do so.
The government of President Mills must be super-cautious about this particular murder case - which has all the signs of a major cover-up (to spare the blushes of the A.M.A., perhaps), written all over it.
If those of us who are keen to see that there is justice for Nana Yaw Ofori, have anything to do with it, this outrage is not going to disappear any time soon.
Indeed, it may very well end up becoming a major scandal - and the Mills regime's equivalent of the NPP's Ya Naa and Issa Mobila wahala: and hang around their collective neck like an albatross, forever being dragged up as an example of human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings during their regime's tenure.
President Mills would be wise to call in the head of the Bureau for National Investigations (BNI), the National Security Coordinator and the Inspector General of Police - and demand that they find out who exactly killed Nana Yaw Ofori, and why.
President Mills must ask them to tell him whether the release of Nana Yaw Ofori's body to the family, means that the DNA tests are now conclusive - and if so, if the suspect fingered by the original James Town Police CID investigator, will now be arrested and charged for Nana Yaw Ofori's murder?
Alas, if he fails to do so, it will come back to haunt his National Democratic Congress (NDC) party - as sure as day follows night.
With respect, this is no matter to procrastinate over. A word to the wise...
Tel (Powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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