Ghana’s longest-serving Attorney General (AG), Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, has added his voice to the lament against the Akufo-Addo government’s hysterical craze to arrest and incarceration of people who utter the word “Coup” in the country
Speaking on Accra-based Citi FM’s Eye witness news, he said such arrests do not have bases.
“There is a difference between speech and action. [If I were the Attorney General] I will take action only when there is evidence of preparation to carry out a coup. If somebody is only talking, I will just take it to be over-excitement. I won’t go arresting people for that,” he said.
His take follows an earlier point made by the Dean of the University of Ghana Law School, Prof. Raymond Atuguba, that the detention of freedom fighter, Oliver Barker-Vormawor of the #FixTheCountry pressure group over his supposed threat to stage a coup was unlawful.
Mr. Barker-Vormawor who had been incensed by Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu’s birthday cake baked in the wording the controversial e-levy tax had posted on social media that he would stage a coup if the e-levy is passed.
Over this, the jittery Akufo-Addo government which is also trying a medical doctor and a host of others over a supposed coup plot in which they were preparing to use weapons including a kitchen knife and supposed pepper bombs, had arrested and detained Mr. Barker-Vormawor.
Experts have pointed out that Mr. Barker Vormawor, a constitutional lawyer, cannot carry out a coup if he even were to be really desirous of it.
Meanwhile, Dr. Obed Asamoah who was AG from 1993 to 2007, and was the longest-serving AG, cautioned against the coup rhetoric saying people who wish for a coup do not really know the ramifications that they are inviting.
“I know they think that they want to help the underprivileged but they don’t know what really happened [previously]. They haven’t had experiences of a coup d’état. In the confusion of the coup, one of the things that happen is, individual soldiers, take vengeance on people. They harass people because they have had some issues with those individuals, and that is not helpful,” he cautioned.