“Dishonourable Okudzeto Ablakwa” is uncouth, uncultured for insulting elders – Martin Amidu

• Posted on September 12, 2017September 12, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

I was astounded to read a feature article by Dishonourable Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa entitled ‘Martin Amidu’s “Hate Agenda” -….’ on the Modern Ghana website on 5^th September 2017 in which he opens with his conduct of restraining himself from commenting on my deliberate attacks on the former President and the NDC because of his respect for elders in the NDC and the party in general.

Okudzeto Ablakwa is the person whom while claiming to be entitled to the title Honourable Deputy Minister at age 28 years without having done any public service in his life has made himself notorious for insulting everybody old enough to be his father and other elders including former President Rawlings and former President Kufuor. 

But Okudzeto Ablakwa chose to give the impression in his feature article devoted to insulting me with reckless abandon that he respects elders, at least in the NDC, and excuses his attacks on me for exercising my right to free speech in congratulating the Kenyan Supreme Court for the Court’s decision annulling the 8^th August 2017 elections on the flimsy ground that I had attacked “the former President” whom I believe is supposedly dumb figuratively and therefore unable to speak for himself.

My initial reaction was to respond extensively to his article in which he deliberately twists facts to satisfy his warped imagination like a person high on something. But I was dissuaded from doing so when I read two other feature articles on the Modern Ghana website of that day and I realized that his insults and condemnation of my article congratulating the Kenyan Supreme Court and questioning the integrity of John Dramani Mahama to accept to be an observer in an election in which the whole world knew that the incumbent President in that election is his personal friend, had been answered by two more mature contributors. The two matured feature articles I am referring to are: “Uhuru Mahama Exposed In Kenya’s August 8 Elections Scam – Parts 5 Okudzeto Ablakwa’s Farcical Defence of Mr. Mahama”, and “What Selfless Judges Can Do In Africa”.

Truth be told, no person with integrity will accept to preside over an impartial tribunal or body to determine the transparency and fairness of any national election in which his bosom friend is an incumbent President participant. Okudzeto’s mentor, John Dramani Mahama, who elevated him to Deputy Minister of Education amidst protest from the public, should simply have recused himself from the Commonwealth Observer Team as a mark of honour but he did not do so as proof that he has never had any honour – period! Sycophant and lackey Okudzeto Ablakwa blames me for his former President’s lack of simple and elementary candour and decency.

Incidentally, I did not know that Okudzeto Ablakwa had written an earlier article titled: “”On Developments in Kenya And Why The Vicious Attacks on Former President John Mahama Are Most Unfair” published on Modern Ghana on 4^thSeptember 2017, defending his mentor. It was after I read this earlier article that I realized that my reasoned article congratulating the Kenyan Supreme Court had nullified the spurious arguments he had made in defence of John Mahama’s misjudgment or lack of it: hence his vitriolic attacks on me on the 5^th September 2017 feature article.

Okudzeto Ablakwa in his usual insulting style of writing did not limit himself to my congratulation of the Kenyan Supreme Court and contextual matters related to it but digressed into seeking sympathy from the judiciary by questioning my moral character as a good lawyer. I can only tell OkudzetoAblakwathat even though as a crook he perceives me not to be a lawyer of any good moral character the PNDC and NDC kept me as their Deputy Attorney General for upwards of twelve years, and I was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1999 only for me to decline the nomination on personal grounds. Former Supreme Court Justice and later Speaker of Parliament, Mrs. Bamford-Addo, and Mr. Justice Atuguba who is still on the Supreme Court bench can confirm this as they were asked by the then Chief Justice Isaac KobinaAbban who had nominated me to persuaded me to accept it.

Okudzeto Ablakwa also questioned why I had not followed up on my previous assertions that Anas Amereyaw Anas was a covert Government agent whom the Mahama Government had instructed to suppress his parliamentary corruption investigative video clip in order to reduce the public confidence only in the judiciary. I was not against the exposure of judicial corruption. I was nauseated by the fact that any genuine anti-corruption campaigner will hold a service passport from the Government and agree to suppress the results of investigative work against another organ of Government simply because his principals instructed him to do so. I could not file any processes against the Government and Anas Amereyaw Anas because some of the judges who were accused of corruption were challenging the allegations against them in various courts including the Supreme Court.

I was not stupid not to understand that if I commenced any action in the Supreme Court while those cases were still pending the ignorant public may think I was siding with the judges accused of corruption against Anas Aremeyaw Anas which would not have been the case. As long as those judges continue with their cases in court, experience and tactical considerations have urged me to stay my hands in the matter. I was called to the Bar almost two good years before OkudzetoAblakwa was born on 11^th August 1980and I cannot, therefore, make the infantile mistakes he wished I should have made by following up on my allegations when the other cases are still pending. I may yet be proved right in the future when no corruption cases in the judges’ corruption cases are pending before the courts or when this Government decides to investigate my allegations against the John Mahama Government in the use of unconstitutional covert agents during his administration.

Okudzeto Ablakwa also stupidly questions why as a Plaintiff/Applicant spending my own resources to try to retrieve the over GHC51 million Woyome and Mills/ Mahama Government loot of the national purse, I should cut my losses by withdrawing my application to examine the principal looter, Woyome, in the face of undue delays by the Court to dispose of the matter and the of rising cost to me personally so that the new Government would continue with that endeavor as it had promised. Only an infantile lawyer like Okudzeto Ablakwa would refuse to cut his losses as I did when he knows that Governments in Ghana do not pay for any fees associated with filing and prosecuting civil cases except legal costs, damages, and other awards. I am still the Plaintiff in the Woyomecase who is at liberty to go back to the Court should I not be satisfied with the handling of the execution process of the judgment in my favour.

On 6^th September 2017, Citi FM fished out my birthday, called to congratulate me, and took advantage of the occasion to have a short interview with me. It was after this interview in which I had responded to questions such as whether I am a contrarian or a traitor to the NDC that I discovered that Okudzeto Ablakwa had written another feature article insulting me on 5^th September 2017 entitled: “Martin Amidu, Is He A Contrarian, A Traitor, Or An Anti-Corruption Crusader…” on Modern Ghana. Without having read his second article, I had answered his childlike queries in the Citi FM interview which any interested reader may fish out, listen to, or read.

Interestingly, Okudzeto Ablakwa in his usually disingenuous and dishonourable fashion was repeating in that article disagreement he had had with me previously to which I had responded without even having the courtesy of informing his readers about my previous responses. All my responses are on my website, martinamidu.com or Martin Amidu Speaks some of which are under the headings:  “Why Martin Amidu Is Not Using Government Or Party Channels For His Advocacy For Accountability And Transparency” dated 29^th May 2012; “Fighting Graft And Corruption Under The National Democratic Governments Of Ghana” dated 3^rdNovember 2013; On Galloppers, Settlements And The Hallowed Traditions Of The Office Of The Attorney General” dated 10^th July 2012; and “Defending Citizens’ Rights And Freedoms From Unconstitutional Conduct By Government And Its Unlawful Covert Agent” dated 11^th November 2015: and many others.

Unlike Okudzeto Ablakwa who conveys the impression in his articles that Constitutionalism, democracy and the rule of law mandate that I should have protected the crimes and graft I exposed simply because of membership of a political party, I take the right and correct view that the Constitution enjoins every citizen to up hold and defend it by exposing any activity of any person or group of persons who abuse Article 55 on political parties for criminal purposes. My duty to the 1992 Constitution overrides any loyalty to any political party the moment it becomes an enterprise to undermine the Constitution through any form of corruption or graft, including such unconstitutional conducts as those John Mahama and Okudzeto Ablakwa committed when they were in office as a Government.

And yet, Okudzeto Ablakwa shamelessly writes that citizens should disregard their constitutional obligations and protect mafia clubs in political parties when they are acting criminally and unconstitutionally. I believe the reason for OkudzetoAblakwa’s warped reading of the Constitution is an upbringing in which he was not taught to respect his own parents let alone others persons standing in the position of his parents as elders. When a child is cursed by a father who brought him up from age three because of disrespect and insults to him the child grows up to become the type of Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa: with sharp teeth, both figuratively and physically and a scourge on all elders of the whole Ghanaian society except those who feed his greedy political stomach.

This is how it came about that on or around 25^th January 2011 when Okudzeto Ablakwa was 30 years old and married, his adopted father, Benet Ablakwa, who assumed legal responsibility for his upbringing since age 3 “walked into the offices of Daily Guide on Friday, January 21, 2011 swearing that Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa was too ungrateful to occupy a ministerial position and it would be in the interest of the country if he was relieved of his post”. His legal father who was in the company of his sister, Sally Ablakwaadded that: “Samuel OkudzetoAblakwa now treated him like a piece of rag” the Daily Guide recounted. Just go to Ghana Web news archives of 25^th January 2011 to read the full story about what his own father said about his obnoxious character.

Ambassador Tony Aidoo had occasion to descend on this same Okudzeto Ablakwa for his disrespect for elders and his activities of undermining his senior colleagues in Government in a discussion at which Okudzeto Ablakwa himself was present and which is reported on Modern Ghana of 23^rd July 2012. Okudzeto Ablakwa undermined his Minister of Information who was old enough to be his father by assuming the right to address a press conference as a Deputy Minister while the Minister sat by.

I also had occasion to condemn his uncouth and uncultured manners and character of insulting and undermining elders and his superiors when he attempted to corruptly induce me to approve the payment of a US$1.3million alleged judgment debt to Isofoton SA in 2011 – see “People Are fed Up With Ablakwa’s ‘Lies’”, Modern Ghana 13^th July 2012. The Isofoton case is a case in which the Supreme Court later gave judgment in my favour in Amidu (No. 2) v Attorney General, IsofotonSA &Forson (No. 1) [2013-2014] SCGLR 167. The reader should imagine the US$1.3million loss to the national purse which Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa sought corruptly to get me approve for payment to Isofoton, a foreign company, as the Attorney General. The approval of the corrupting request would have benefitted OkudzetoAblakwa personally but for my refusal to do so. The reader should now make up his mind whether Okudzeto Ablakwa’s recent criticisms of me are not a vendetta for my past exposure of his corrupt conduct in the name of being a surrogate for his mentor, the former President.

It is a shame that nobody took the trouble to bring the bad character of Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa to the attention of the General Legal Council and thus enabled him to be enrolled on the Roll of Lawyers by default. May be I was right not to take out the yearly licence to practice as a private legal practitioner since 2006, particularly because of charlatans of the nature of Okudzeto Ablakwa and his likes now admitted to practice in the legal profession for lack of prior challenge to character.

Writing on “The Politics Of Insults” in a feature article on Modern Ghana on 11^thAugust 2010, one author discussing persons who liked using insulting language in the media singled out Okudzeto Ablakwa for criticism as follows:

“While many people here are at fault, I must with great reluctance, single out Okudzeto Ablakwa. Since getting into government the young man has changed – or revealed his true colours.

It seems there is no elder he is not eager to insult. He turns every opportunity to respond to a substantive issue into an insult of others, regardless of their age.

Are there no elders in his government who can counsel him to mind his words? Does he want to be remembered as the young man who took pleasure in insulting his elders?”

It is time Ghanaians told Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa that: “You have insulted your parents and other elders enough. It is time to grow up now that you are married with children.” The last of my three children who was born on 31^stDecember 1982 now has two children and is in Okudzeto Ablakwa’s peer group. My son is 5 good years older than you not to speak of my first daughter. Your former Minister, Mohammed Ayariga is also my son by our custom – ask him. Kindly, therefore, learn to engage in reasoned and matured arguments in your public discourse instead of insults. A word to the wise they say is enough or as we from the North from where you have wisely chosen a wife from a respected and good family like putting it – a word to the wise is in the North.

By: Martin Amidu