Monday,
December 30, 2013
Former
President Rawlings is still stridently insisting that Justice be done for the
Ya-Na (Yakubu Andani II) and 40 or so of his loyalists murdered in March 2002
during the Kufuor era.
According
to him, "this is the time for the people of Bawku to demand justice on the
death of the Ya Na, as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) will not be in
power forever".
Addressing
the people of Bawku at the 26th Anniversary of the annual Samanpiid festival
celebrated by Kusasis in the Kusaug traditional area of the Upper East Region, ex-President
Rawlings questioned why the people of Bawku have gone quiet on the issue of the
Ya Na.
According
to him, it is wrong for the people of the Northern region to keep mute over the
death of the late Ya Na Yakubu Andani II after President Mahama assumed office
because “having a Northerner as President is the more reason why you should be
insisting that we see justice.”
He
mentioned that “if we don’t get to the bottom of this issue … and also with the
way we are performing, if we are not careful and we don’t ensure that a proper
enquiry takes place to identify who did what? Ladies and gentlemen we will end
up watching them and then they will show up again.” (Source: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=296555)
I
don't like this open recourse to ethnicity in Rawlings' utterance. President
Mahama is a Northerner but can't use his ethnic extraction to do what Rawlings
is asking for. Ex-President Mills tried but failed because the forces arrayed
against him were formidable. Those forces are still around, which is why
President Mahama's government can't get to the bottom of the matter.
And
why the people of Bawku and not Yendi/Tamale whose overlord the Ya-Na was?
The
circumstances surrounding the murder of the Ya-Na have been shrouded in some
terrible conspiratorial secrecy and the event itself so heavily politicized as
to defy unravelling and solution.
Rawlings
himself had once claimed to have incontrovertible evidence on the perpetrators
but hasn't disclosed anything to help solve the problem. Those arrested
couldn't be successfully prosecuted "for lack of evidence". So, they
were released. Does he not know that without such incontrovertible evidence no
one can be arrested and successfully prosecuted?
The
bad-blood relationship between the Andanis and the Abudus has been tainted all
the more by partisan politics. Rawlings is aware of this problem; so, merely
urging that justice be done for the Ya-Na under an NDC government isn't any
laudable suggestion, especially at this time when the dust on the matter seems
to be settling down and the Andanis and Yakubus are minding their own business.
The
pain may be difficult to outgrow but no amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth
will solve the problem. Rabble-rousing will only re-ignite the feud that no
sane mind will appreciate.
Folks,
there are good reasons to attempt putting the past behind, letting bygones be
bygones in the interest of whatever has sustained life in the country so far.
No rabble-rousing under the guise of sympathy.
Some may blame the Ghana Police
Service for not doing its work professionally or with the seriousness that this
Yendi Massacre deserves. I disagree with them. Indeed, the Ghana Police Service
is well recognized when it comes to investigating serious crimes and exposing
the perpetrators. Its personnel are known to have duly investigated and cracked
serious crimes over the years.
I can vouch for them that they
know how to do their job, especially in investigating murder cases, however
intricate they might be. The only problem with this Ya-Na case is the heavy
politicization that has beclouded everything surrounding it and derailed any
effort to delve into it, let alone trace the perpetrators.
Every reasonable being who is
informed about the circumstances leading to the massacre and the aftermath will
conclude that some "faceless" and "invisible" hands were
behind it all. There was too much glaring evidence even before the crime was
committed:
1. The military detachment and
the inability to prevent the crime (apparently, the fact that the armoured car
didn't even have any battery in it, as we were told);
2. The cutting off of telephone
service in the area (we were told in the news what happened);
3. The fact that the former Vice
President (Aliu Mahama) was informed of the tension in the area and his
assurances that the government won't sit down for anything to be done to the
Ya-Na, yet nothing being done to protect him);
3. The role of Major Sulemana and
national security apparatus in the entire affair even though the BNI District
Officer and Regional Secretariat had conveyed the true picture of events to
them before the massacre;
4. The fact that Ellis Owusu
Fordjuor (then Director of the BNI) resigned in protest at the shoddy handling
of the issue (after his office had informed the government of the reality on
the ground);
5. The sloppy manner in which the
Kufuor government dealt with the matter, especially after some suspects had
been arrested only to be ordered released by Akufo-Addo;
6. The fact that Jahinfo and the
other suspects were parading body parts of the Ya-Na (we heard in the news that
one of them even carried his head around and was kicking it like a football)
was enough evidence with which to pursue the matter; but the Kufuor government
didn't;
7. The setting up of the Wuaku Commission
as a mere smokescreen;
8. The setting up of the
Asantehene-led Committee of Eminent Chiefs on the Dagbon crisis as another
face-saving measure by the Kufuor government;
9. The half-hearted manner in
which the prosecution of Jahinfo and the other suspects was done, leading to their
acquittal, and the inability of the NDC government (of both Mills and Mahama)
to take up the matter again even though it formed part of the 2008
electioneering campaign manifesto) can't solve the problem;
10. The noise being made by
Rawlings is more irritating than helping solve the problem because he isn't
giving anybody any concrete evidence although he had boasted of same several
times in the past.
And there are many more
attenuating factors under those circumstances.
You see, my good friends, the
Yendi Massacre has a lot that crime investigators in Ghana and other parts of
the word can easily tackle if "politics" is removed from it. But in
Ghana where politics is what everybody eats, drinks, sleeps and dreams of, who
in Ghana can approach this case dispassionately to help us have a closure?
None, I daresay.
That is why I am tempted to
suggest that bygones be made bygones and nobody allowed to rake the past just
for political purposes.
I shall return…
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E-mail:
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