It ought to have become crystal and limpidly clear to most studious observers of both Ghana’s Fourth Republican Political Culture and the present Mahama 2.0 regime, by now, that the recent historically unprecedented ousting of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo had far more to do with the depths of the pockets and the wallets and the bank accounts of the alleged First Petitioner who wrote to President John “Ouagadougou Ford Expedition SE Payola” Dramani Mahama to demand the prompt and the immediate removal of the Akufo-Addo-appointed former Apex Court President than showcase any forensically credible evidence that warranted the prompt and/or the immediate removal of the immediate former Chief Justice of the august Supreme Court of Ghana, as publicly and recently exposed by Mr. Ayikoi-Otoo, Lead Counsel for the Respondent and former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.
Barely a fortnight after the grossly unprofessional and the scandalous and politically motivated removal of only the Third Woman in postcolonial Ghanaian history to have been named President of the Highest Court of the Land, as it were, a patently frivolously news story appeared in the “Business” section of Ghanaweb.com with the following “see who I am” screaming headline: “Ghana’s Richest Investor Sees $7.6 Million Jump in Networth – Report” (9/14/25). And by the way, we also need to promptly put it on public record here that all three female Chiefs Justice, who were appointed into the highest judicial office of the land, had been relentlessly and systematically hounded out of office by National Democratic Congress-sponsored Presidents. So the latest virulent removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo by President Mahama was not altogether a happenstance or pure accident.
Now, other than the bald, shameless and patently pedestrian announcement that Mr. Daniel Ofori owned 7.5-percent stake in GCB Bank, and just recently added some $7.6-Million (USD) to his bank account in equity shares, I suppose, the whole thrust of this telegrammatic news story was not clear until the reader got to the tailend of it, and was superfluously reminded, in case the reader had so soon forgotten all about it, that, indeed, it was “Daniel Ofori: The rich stock broker who got Justice Torkornoo sacked.”
Which, of course, was nothing absolutely short of plain peevish and laughable, because the unmistakable import of the foregoing marginal description of the identity of the petitioner was that these days, all it takes to get even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) removed from office is simply to be well-heeled or reasonably loaded with moolah, as New York City street urchins are fond of saying, and not the fact of whether, indeed, any petitioner who wants to have the Highest Judicial Officer of the Land, or any highly positioned Ghanaian public official removed from office, for having grossly misconducted themselves, need not provide any forensically credible evidence short of the fact of the petitioner’s wealth or socioeconomic standing in Ghanaian society.
Then, of course, there is this weird and funny edge to Mr. Ofori’s petition against Mrs. Gertrude Sackey-Torkornoo that verges on the fact that the plaintiff would so “authoritatively” accuse the former Chief Justice of the gross and/or the criminal misappropriation of a specially earmarked imprest for the legitimate work-related foreign trips of Superior Court Judges, when the general public is not reliably informed as to whether, in fact, the plaintiff was privy to such information as a result of being, himself, a bona fide member of Ghana’s Judicial Establishment.
I mean, is there no law or decree on the statutory books of the country that necessitates that any petitioner who predicates their petition seeking the summary removal of another with purported evidence or information that they would otherwise not have come by, unless they were professionally privileged with such evidence or information? But what is even more damning about the investigations panel established for the removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo, Chaired by Justice Gabriel Scott Pwamang, an appointee of President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, is the committee membership’s flat and adamant refusal, at the express demand of the respondent, to have Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo’s Auto-Dafé ordeal held in public and in full-view and in plain sight of the general Ghanaian citizenry, on the rather quaint and untenably dubious grounds that Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution strictly dictated that the veritable and the politically motivated crucifixion of the respondent be held in-camera or behind closed doors which, of course, was luridly akin to the members of the Pwamang Committee insisting on their righteous and inalienable civic obligation to gang-rape Mrs. Sackey-Torkornoo without absolutely any qualms, the victim having already been predetermined to be unpardonably deserving of being mercilessly deflorated till heaven and hell froze over in perpetuity.
“Blood Will Have Blood!” an avid Ghanaian scholar of the globally immortalized Bard-of-Avon was recently reported by the media to have predicted, that if the now-68-year-old Mahama-appointed Chief Justice P K Baffoe-Bonnie does not retire at the officially mandated age of 70, that is, barely two years from hence, it is highly likely that the next opposition party-sponsored government, most probably the New Patriotic Party (NPP), would have the John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed, diehard National Democratic Congress’ partisan summarily ousted in much the same way and manner as the goring of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo. Perhaps even without the sort of Kangaroo-Hearing sendoff conducted for the Third Woman in postcolonial Ghanaian history to have headed the highest court of the land.
For Yours Truly, personally, though, as a people and a nation, we ought to have since long transcended the primitive politics of vendetta and developed a carapace of progressive organicity of purpose. So far, though, lamentably, neither leadership of the country’s two major political parties appears to have come this laudably far.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD – Professor Emeritus, Department of English, SUNY-Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York. E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com
