Attempts by Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako to cover up a key piece of evidence that potentially links the brutal murder of Mohammed “Kaaka” Ibrahim, the Ejura-based social media activist to political motives has exploded on his face.
On April 15, 2021, the Commander of Police at the Ejura-Sekyeredumase Police Command had written a revealing letter to Kaaka, warning him to “desist” from his social activism which highlighted deprivation in his community, apparently because some members of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the community had complained that Kaaka’s call for better social equity for the Ejura people was making the Akufo Addo administration “unpopular”.
However, during the Joy FM Newsfile programme on Saturday, July 10, 2021, Kwaku Baako, the Managing Editor of the New Crusading Guide stated categorically that the said letter was fake and that the media and other social activists were using the letter to generate unrest in the country.
According to the bragging Baako, he had confirmed the dubiousness of the letter from the Director of Police CID, COP Isaac Ken Yeboah, who allegedly told him, the Police do not use the letterhead that the Ejura warning letter was written on. “It is completely fake,” Baako fired.
However, unbeknownst to him, the Police Service had admitted that the letter was indeed authentic when one of the Police officers were grilled about it during last week’s sitting of the Justice George Kingsley Koomson committee to probe the bloody murders at Ejura by both ruling party mobs and soldiers who shot into a crowd of civilians protesting Kaaka’s murder.
Meanwhile, a researcher at the University of Cambridge and a key volunteer of the #FixTheCountry Movement, Oliver Barker-Vormawor has suggested that the Ghana Police Service and the Justice Koomson Committee must acknowledge the extensive evidence that Kaaka’s lynching was intrinsically linked to his social activism.
According to him, attempts by the Police Service, some government officials, and politicians to suppress Kaaka’s activism from his murder grossly undermine the ongoing police investigation into the matter.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, July 10, Barker-Vormawor said, “We have consistently spoken to the family and his family has consistently held that view that he was attacked on the basis of his activism. So this is not a fanciful view that anybody is holding or has brought out of nowhere.”
Whatsup News is in possession of audio recordings made by Kaaka before his death. In the audio, lengthy recordings, he gave significant clues to the hypothesis that he was murdered for reportedly making the Akufo Addo administration “unpopular”.
In the damning audio, Kaaka had been confronted by a group of angry men who he said were sent by Mohammed Salisu Bamba, the Municipal Chief Executive of the Ejura-Sekyeredumase municipality to stop him from highlighting the abject deprivation that the people of Ejura were suffering because his activism was making the government “unpopular”.
In the audio, the group of governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) thugs were attempting to force Kaaka to window-dress the deplorable social conditions of the people of Ejura and only highlight positive narratives that praise the government and the MCE.
“It’s in my effort in shooting videos like this that the MCE sent people to me yesterday that my action was making him unpopular…and that if I don’t stop, whatever happens to me, I called for it,” Kaaka said in a recorded conversation he had with an unknown person.
A defiant Kaaka told the person on the other line that he refused to budge and decided to film another video that he uploaded on Facebook, saying “ So, I decided to shoot the video so my audience will see that if I get beaten or something happens to me, it is because this video I am shooting.”
Kaaka went ahead to challenge the MCE Salisu Bamba that “ if he insists he did not send them, that I was accusing him wrongly, then he should take the matter up in court, so we all know who is telling the truth.”
A few days later, the Police Commander in the Ejura-Sekyeredumase Police Command reinforced the fact that the activism of Kaaka was making some people in government uncomfortable and warned him to “desist” from his social activism.
Barely a week after that strange warning, a group of thugs ambushed Kaaka and clubbed him to death, sparking a protest on Kaaka’s funeral day in Ejura. In response, to the protest, the Ghana armed forces sent fully armed soldiers to the scene and started shooting into the crowd without provocation.
Two young men were killed on the spot, with one of them shot in the back while fleeing and more than six other sustained serious injuries. Later, one of the injured will also die making the tally three dead and almost a dozen injured.
The Interior Minister Ambrose Dery has set up a committee to investigate the sequence of events, but already, the posture of the committee headed by Justice George Kingsley Koomson, alongside other members like Dr. Vladimir Antwi Danso and Juliet Amoah.
But the posture of the committee has reeked of bias and an attempt to cover up the true undercurrents that led to the Ejura killings.