Nayele cocaine: Attorney-General owes us a press conference
Predictably and understandably, the reaction of the public to the Attorney-General’s decision to file nolle-prosequi, has been one of suspicion. People are unable to fight off the suspicion that the long arm of government has been at work, and that the intent was to shield either the government or somebody in government.
In a country where everything is politically tainted, the reaction is no surprise. It has happened in other countries, a scenario not very much unlike how America’s mafia is rumoured to determine the outcome of cases in court. Even where the accused’s guilt has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt, judges have been known to pass lenient sentences and then proceed to suspend the sentence. That’s life: such is the fallen state of humankind. Our minds are innately evil.
I don’t know Law; indeed, aside a semester or so when I sat at the feet of Prof Kofi Kumado for a Media Law course at the School of Communication Studies, Legon, and the privilege I enjoyed from 1987 through 2011 (with a few years break), editing stories of Ghanaian Times/Weekly Spectator court reporters, I am as ignorant of the law as a lawyer is of palmwine tapping.
In discussing law, therefore, I bear in mind that “Monkeys play by sizes”, that if I have learned to rub my back-side after a visit to the small room, I should learn to do so against the toilet walls, not against briars and thorny plants. So who am I to take on the Attorney-General on points of law! I should be doing that with first year Law students.
Few angels on earth
Nonetheless, as you may guess, I was livid when the news broke that the A-G’s Office had decided it had no case against the five persons arrested for allegedly abetting the perpetration of a drug offence by Nayele Ametefe. Like most people, my proboscis were on high alert. Who in government could the A-G’s Office possibly be shielding? That’s a legitimate suspicion, seeing as we are in a country where cocaine turns to something else in the custody of the police! By my training and experience in this life, nobody – absolutely nobody – is an angel when it comes to drugs and corruption.
The big money involved is too tempting, you have no idea! As a prosecutor, I know that the bribe money due me if I decide to play ball can build three storey-buildings. I look at my salary and consider that my classmates who, in school, were light years away from the first 40 positions in every exam, are now earning GH¢10,000-plus for doing nothing but becoming MPs after joining a certain political party and being bold to put themselves up as candidates in the safest “World Bank” constituencies. They are riding the latest cars: I, too, deserve one. They are leading in fashion (especially political suit): I too deserve beautiful apparel – and why not: after all, I have been to Law School, paying fees that required me or my parents to break a bank!
As far as I am concerned, there are very very few angels left on this earth, if any at all. We have seen too many pious-looking politicians and public officers pontificate with much holy-talk only to turn out to be the devil we did not know. Remember, there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.
The aim of this article is simple: to ask the Attorney-General’s Office to come again. That office owes the public some explanations.
Need for explanation
Why were the five suspects arrested in the first place? Under what law? I cannot but side with those who suspect that the charade was to quieten the public in the midst of alarms and assuage feelings in the heat of the scandal.
More: the public needs better and more plausible explanations about the presence of the black limousine at Heathrow Airport when the aircraft carrying Nayele landed. It is in the interest of the government to go on to mention which military officers were on the plane for whom the car had been placed in waiting.
And, back in Accra, what was the need for taking media personnel through the airport V(V)IP procedure which received so much peak-time attention on radio/TV and screaming newspaper headlines? Was it a mere charade? If it was, why? If it wasn’t, why?
The public needs to know. The law of Accountability demands it. For one, we need an explanation why the police went ahead to arrest the five. Is it an offence to go through the VIP lounge? If I carry the luggage of a fellow passenger and the luggage is later found to contain cocaine, does that amount to abetment? Should I be deemed to have PURPOSELY carried the luggage in the knowledge
That there was drug inside?
Even without being a lawyer it looks to me now that the persons arrested and held for some time without bail were as "guilty" as a taxi driver who drives a person to the airport, who is later found to be carrying drugs. Why is it that in other countries, the police investigate offences before arresting people, but in Ghana, the police arrest first, and then beg the courts not to grant bail because they are now investigating the alleged offence? I had the foreboding that this case was doomed when the prosecution stopped attending court, leading the court to grant bail for what is essentially a non-bailable offence. I was right.
So the question is: Why did the Attorney-General’s Office, with its superior knowledge of the law, proceed with the police evidence to prefer charges against the five suspects? The fact that there are not too many lawyers at the A-G’s Department should be no excuse why the public should be so hoodwinked by state officers whose salaries are paid by the people of Ghana.
