Kofi Ofosu Nkansah
The former CEO of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), Kofi Ofosu Nkansah, has had a taste of the arbitrariness and abuse of power now a feature of governance in the country today.
He was arrested and his residence needlessly searched by National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) agents when all he did was claim that foreign scholarships are being sold.
His allegation offended some bigwigs in government or even the ruling party.
It took his illness in detention and the intervention of his lawyers to have him released from the ‘we shall show you where power lies’ arrest.
This country has grown past this level of political backwardness and intolerance, hence our concern and indeed those of other well-meaning Ghanaians.
The country’s governance is listing and perilously so. Looking on unconcerned should not be an option because that will not inure to the interest of the nation.
Ghanaians, following the developments related to this latest show of power abuse, have recalled the many peddling of untruths by National Democratic Congress (NDC) activists ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, none of which attracted a police invitation let alone the search of houses by state security agents. Today, the government of the day is unable to tolerate a dose of what their agents administered on their predecessors.
Selective justice is something we should avoid because of its negative implications on governance. The optics from such arbitrariness does not cast us in good light in the comity of civilised nations. We can do better as citizens of a country which is regarded by others as a beacon of civility and democracy.
Government appointees who pull the strings from the background to make state security agents do their smelly biddings make such executors look bad, and that is not fair.
It is clear that when the gentleman was invited and released, somebody in government was not enthused and decided that he be ruffled through a detention. This was done and, of course, to the satisfaction of the sadist or sadists behind the scene.
How long shall we continue to allow the freedoms of our citizens to be trampled upon? Is it an offence to blow the whistle on noticed anomalies?
Why wouldn’t the NIB rather probe the scholarship sale allegation instead of the whistle blower?
Such arrests, when citizens blow the whistle as Kofi Ofosu Nkansah did, if they are intended to silence Ghanaians when anomalies are noticed, will not succeed in cowing us. No. Never.
Whatever happened to measures put in place to allow for transparency in governance in the country? Are we serious as a country?
A little over a year into the four-year term of the government, too many such infringements of the freedom of citizens have been recorded.