BBC, US State Department Indicts Akufo-Addo Gov’t Of State-Sponsored Killings And Corruption

The BBC and the US State Department have indicted the Akufo Addo administration for its tyrannical crackdown on dissent and state-sponsored killing and incarceration of dissenters.

In the latest edition of the BBC Trending programme, famous victims of the totalitarian tactics of the Akufo Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) were interviewed, including Oliver Barker-Vormawor, one of the conveners of the non-partisan youth group, #FixTheCountry who was arrested and kept in jail for 35 days without trial for stating his opposition to the government’s thievish electronic levy, aka e-levy.

The BBC report cited how President Akufo Addo, who was credited as one of the leading figures in scrapping the fascist criminal libel law had resurrected a 1960 law of prosecuting people for what is tagged “False Publication”. Several citizens and journalists have been picked up under the guise of this totalitarian law, including David Tamakloe, the Editor-in-Chief of Whatsup News, who was picked twice.

In one of his arrests, the Police cited a report that the e-newspaper was yet to publish and was still investigating a suspect known to be a political financier of the Akufo Addo campaign.

On the heels of the BBC report, the 2021 edition of the US State Department’s Annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices also cited state-sponsored killings as one of the notorieties that punctuated the Akufo-Addo government’s mean streak in 2021.

The report which was released on April 12, 2022, also cited serious corruption, arbitrary arrests, denial of fair trial and a clampdown on press freedom as some of the ills of the government.

“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government or its agents; cases of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by the government or on behalf of the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including violence and threats of violence against journalists, and unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists; substantial interference with freedom of assembly; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including but not limited to domestic or intimate partner violence…,” parts of the report read.

The report added that the government appears to have made some efforts towards confronting corruption however, even these efforts were hamstrung by impunity.

The report enumerated some specificities, including the suspected state-sponsored murder of Mohammed Kaaka Macho in Ejura and the arrest and molestation of Citi FM’s Caleb Kudah by national security operatives.

On May 11, Ministry of National Security officers detained and allegedly brutalized Caleb Kudah, a journalist with Omni Media Limited (OML), operator of Accra-based Citi FM radio and Citi TV. Authorities accused Kudah of filming a fleet of vehicles that had allegedly fallen into disrepair as a result of neglect at the Ministry of National Security facility, a restricted site. The security officers who detained Kudah reportedly beat and abused him during interrogation. On the same day, a SWAT team reportedly entered the OML offices in an attempt to arrest Zoe Abu-Baido, Kudah’s colleague. The Ministry of National Security accused Baidoo of possessing video files sent to her by Kudah immediately before his detention.

“Following public outrage the Ministry of National Security announced an internal probe into the incident which led to the suspension of the officers involved. Less than a week after his suspension, the Ministry of National Security leadership re-assigned Lieutenant Colonel Acheampong, identified as the commander of the operation that apprehended and reportedly abused Kudah, to serve as commanding officer of a different unit of the Ghanaian Armed Forces,” the report stated.