There is a tape in the studios of Citi FM which many of those calling for the crucifixion of CID boss, DCOP Maame Tiwaa Adoo Danquah, have not listened to carefully. I heard it last Tuesday, minutes after Mr John Ndebugri spoke on the DNA tests conducted on the remains of the murdered Takoradi girls.
On that tape, the CID boss is very clear what she is standing on. In what appears to be an attempt to distance her person from her position, she said words to the effect that the second person plural used in her April 2, 2019 “We know where they are” statement was the royal ‘we’, a reference to the Ghana Police Service as a collective; that the decision to make that announcement was not hers.
Hear her: “Many organizations were working together. As a matter of fact, any other officer could have been selected to read the statement at the press conference” (not her exact words, but statement to that effect)
If you, like many Ghanaians, are holding a big stone to cast it at her, this statement should cause you to pause. The woman is, in effect, declaring that what she said may have come from her mouth but it was the Ghana Police Service talking; that if someone has to take the fall for it, there are many others.
Which makes sense to me. Why else do you think the poor woman has not been given the boot for a goof that has given the Ghana Police Service and the Government of Nana Akufo Addo a bad name, earning the President nothing but threats of a thumbs down in December 2020?
Yours Truly is on record as calling for the head of this fine female CID boss. Since I heard that tape on Tuesday, however, I have concluded that I was wrong.
In the light of this evidence, is the learned Ndebugre still of the “forceful” opinion that DCOP Tiwaa should be crucified?
I have two issues to discuss this week. The second is the latest thorn in our side, the almighty Computerized School Placement. I think if any official in Ghana has questions to answer, it is the Minister of Education, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh.
Did you watch Metro TV News on the night of Tuesday 17th September? The man was strutting his way like a colossus, very pleased with himself as reporters, with cameras, mics, notepads and pen at the ready, were literally begging for his comment on the chaotic situation at the Independence Square. For about a minute on TV, the man everybody calls ‘Napo’ threw off the pressmen, asking them to go to the Ghana Education – as if the GES was under the Ministry for Zongo Development!
Now hear the Minister in an interview on Asempa FM. He said that the chaos at the Independence Square was the action of some disgruntled persons who organized the youth and their mothers and fathers to besiege the Square and cause mayhem!
My question, which I haven’t had a chance to ask him, was whether the people who fainted were also paid to faint.
The question Napo should be answering is why he (or his Ministry) in 2018 dissolved the Computerized Selection Committee, which had been in place for 13 years, gathering, not dust, but experience in computer selection? I can bet my bottom cedi that the dissolution had nothing to do with competence or efficiency. My question is relevant given the claim by the Deputy Director-General of GES, speaking to Paul Adom Okyere on ‘Good Evening Ghana’, that the chaos that attended the school selection process was the result of a “system failure”.
Which system? On the Asempa FM interview, the Minister, justifying his allegation of “sabotage”, wondered why the sudden breakdown of a system that had worked so satisfactorily in the past. My next question: if it ain’t broken, why fix it?
George Orwell certainly had NDC-NPP Ghana in mind when he wrote his seminal allegory, ‘Animal Farm’, in 1945. After successfully eliminating Boxer, his main contender in the struggle to succeed the human owner of the farm whom all the animals had booted out of power, Napoleon and his dogs instituted a state of affairs where everything that went wrong in governance was attributed to Boxer, then in exile.
Typical of NDC/NPP shadow boxing. Any government functionary who goofs, only has to make everybody believe that there had been a tampering with or sabotage of the system by the other party in opposition.
It was the same Napo who, as Minister of Education, goofed badly in the KNUST June 2018 riots. Fortunately for Ghanaians, when he misled Cabinet to dissolve the University Council, he met his match, not in a politician, but the Chancellor, the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.
Was there really a case for dissolving the Computerized School Selection Committee? Must everybody be a member of a ruling party?
Aren’t we getting tired?