A few years ahead of the February 24 1966 putsch that ousted the Kwame Nkrumah’s one-party regime intense apprehension held sway across the political terrain.
Many Ghanaians had been incarcerated at the Ussher Fort and Nsawam prisons under the Preventive Detention Act (PDA). This Act allowed the political establishment through the security agencies to arrest and incarcerate those whose actions were thought to have threatened national security.
The interpretation of this Act vague as it was allowed for its wanton abuse.
How time flies!! The foregone, foreboding as it sounds is now confined to the large belly of history.
Those who witnessed those moments of our history would pray fervently so it remains on the pages of history not to be repeated.
Unfortunately even under a democracy traces of those days are being played out albeit subtly and earning for us an unenviable ranking on the freedom chart.
As we compose this commentary for God and country, a citizen of this country, Kofi Ofosu Nkansah, former CEO of the National Entrepreneurship And Innovation Programme (NEIP) has been released on bail after a crude and fear-inducing arrest by agents of the now notorious National Intelligence Bureau (NIB).
Even more worrying is the fact that his lawyer and friends didn’t know his whereabouts until much later.
His offence or crime? He blew a whistle about alleged sale of government foreign scholarships by some appointees. That is all. His house was searched as though he had been arrested over a coup attempt or even drug smuggling.
Earlier another Ghanaian an MP on the Majority side in Parliament alleged that someone paid GHC30,000 to have his ward placed in a school of his choice anchoring this with a claim of having an evidence. He was not invited for questioning because he is on the government side of the political equation.
We are constrained to state that such arbitrariness and selective justice being played out retard the growth of democracy and national progress.
Polarisation feeds upon such aberrations. This is not the maiden time that we are witnessing such arrests.
In the case under review the NPP activist had when invited by the NIB officials said his father was indisposed and rather gave them a date convenient for him under the circumstances. When he eventually turned up he was arrested his release thwarted when suspected NDC activists insisted that he be detained.
It is instructive to note that his arrest was announced on social media by NDC activists. Those who think the detention of the suspect is at the instance of the NDC cannot be dismissed because the footprints of the party actors are visible in the plot.
In the end nothing would come out of this even after the infringement upon the human rights of the suspect.
Let those wielding power do so with a sense of responsibility a recourse to history of power at the hands of dictators and be guided.
