“Kangaroo Court” Remands #FixTheCountry Youth Activist For Two More Weeks

-Despite Court Lacking Jurisdiction 

#FixTheCountry convener, Oliver Barker-Vormawor who is being prosecuted for mentioning the word “coup” in a sentence, has been remanded into police custody for another two weeks following a dubious proceeding in the Ashaiman District Court.

Mr. Barker-Vormawor will return to court on March 15, 2021.

During the hearing of his supposed treason felony charges on Monday, February 28, 2022, an understandably upset Barker-Vormawor described his prosecution in the court as a “Kangaroo Court” after the court in a display of clear victimisation refused him bail, despite lacking the jurisdiction to handle supposed treason felony cases.

Barker-Vormawor had referred the court presided over by Justice Eleanor Kakra Barnes to the inconsistency in its claim that it has no jurisdiction over the case, but had gone ahead to remand him against his fundamental human rights, with the excuse that it did not have the power to grant him bail.

After he openly confronted the judge, an angry Justice Kakra Barnes asked for the #FixTheCountry convenor to be walked out of the courtroom.

Mr. Barker-Vormawor’s lawyer, Justice Srem Sai, had raised issues with the jurisdiction of the Ashaiman District Court to preside over a matter that bordered the personal liberty of his client.

He prayed the court to give a ruling on whether the prosecution had adhered to the provisions of the constitution as far as the personal liberty of his client is concerned.

The fallout dovetails widely held views that Ghana’s Judiciary has lost much public confidence due to extreme corruption and partisan posturing of judges and some lawyers within the judicial system of the country.

This inherently dangerous trend is one of the reasons why the respected law luminary, Dr. Raymond Atuguba lamented that Ghana may be on a path to a real possibility of a coup d’état.

Mr. Barker-Vormawor had made series of Facebook posts referring to the noun “Coup” in reference to his outfit’s decision to resist the proposed passage of the obnoxious Electronic Levy (e-levy) that the Akufo Addo administration is attempting to thievishly extract from savings of Ghanaians who use electronic transfer services to remit personal funds.

His last of a week-long series of posts over the e-levy, Mr. Barker-Vormawor said he will personally stage a coup if the e-levy was passed.

Later, he will substantiate what he meant by the word “Coup”, after critics assumed he was referring to a Coup d’etat-a purely armed insurgency to take over a country’s constitution and government.

According to Mr. Barker-Vormawor, his coup was specifically in reference to his youth group, #FixTheCountry signing an agreement with a group of international lawyers to fight against the killer e-levy.

However, the Akufo Addo administration which has become paranoid about the word “coup” had ordered the arrest of the youth activist and strip him of all his human rights by first keeping him in police custody beyond the stipulated 48 hours without trial and without the privilege of talking to his lawyers and family members.

He was arrested on Friday, February 11, 2022, at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) upon his visit to Ghana for a public lecture with some diplomats in Ghana.

Barker-Vormawor’s arrest marked another display of unbridled tyranny by the Akufo Addo administration.

Mr. Barker-Vormawor, a Ph.D. research fellow at the University of Cambridge and a constitutional lawyer had used a word in an innocuous context, but the government had illogically assumed he was “personally” planning to overthrow it.

Meanwhile, when a ruling party loose-cannon, the Bono Regional NPP Chairman, Kwame Baffoe alias Abronye DC, had uttered the same word in more explicit terms, he was simply invited, detained, and released the following day with charges of “False Publication” and a “breach of the peace”.

According to Abronye, he is an insider to a coup plot against the State by Al Qaeda and former President John Dramani Mahama.

The Akufo Addo administration has become one of the most brutal in Ghana’s history in terms of squashing dissent. Several journalists and activists have been attacked, killed, or tortured for expressing views that the Akufo Addo administration regards as making it “unpopular”.

One of the most prominent of such murders is that of Ahmed Hussein-Suale, an undercover journalist who was assassinated following a damning investigation that refers to an alleged multi-million dollar bribe of President Akufo Addo and Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.