In what is increasingly being condemned as a heavily coordinated campaign of political witch-hunting and state-sponsored intimidation against former stalwarts of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Office of the Attorney-General has escalated its hostile legal maneuvers against the former Chief Executive Officer of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), Abdul-Wahab Hanan Aludiba. Moving swiftly to strip the former appointee of his fundamental rights, the Attorney-General on Tuesday, July 7, filed an aggressive application at the High Court seeking to revoke an explicitly valid judicial travel permit that had been granted to Mr. Aludiba on June 29 to enable him to undergo urgent, specialized medical treatment for a worsening eye condition in the United Kingdom.
The state’s latest heavy-handed action follows a highly controversial, dramatic ambush at the Kotoka International Airport on Saturday night, where armed operatives from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) intercepted and forcibly detained Mr. Aludiba just as he was preparing to board a flight to London. Seeking to justify what the defense has labeled an entirely unlawful abduction, Deputy Attorney-General Dr. Justice Srem-Sai claimed on Facebook that the arrest was triggered by a purported attempt by the former CEO to empty a frozen Republic Bank account using false means.
However, the opposition NPP and Mr. Aludiba’s legal defense team, led by former Attorney-General Godfred Yeboah Dame, have completely blasted these allegations as a fabricated smokescreen designed to cause public disaffection. The defense team clarified that no valid freezing orders are legally in existence because previous restrictions automatically dissolved when the prosecution abruptly dropped its initial, poorly-constructed criminal charges back in May.
This calculated pattern of harassment—characterized by the state repeatedly withdrawing flawed charges, executing theatrical re-arrests, and blocking critical medical care—has ignited widespread fury within the NPP grassroots and leadership, who view the onslaught as a desperate, vindictive effort by the current regime to tarnish the track records of key NPP appointees. Mr. Dame strongly criticized the administration’s systemic abuse of prosecutorial discretion, pointing out that rather than conducting professional, painstaking investigations, the state has consistently relied on sensationalism, armed intimidation, and a deliberate disregard for the courts to persecute political opponents.
With Mr. Aludiba’s legal team already initiating robust contempt proceedings against the Attorney-General, his deputy, and the BNI Director for their brazen defiance of a subsisting High Court order, the escalating legal war has cast a harsh spotlight on the government’s weaponization of state power to execute a ruthless partisan vendetta under the thin guise of accountability.
