I don’t know Justice Abdulai enough to vouch for him. But I felt hurt when the NPP labelled him as NDC in an attempt to question his motive for taking up a suit whose outcome they celebrate – a Deputy Speaker can be counted to form quorum and vote to decide matters in Parliament.

They got the class of their near-cursed unreasoning followers of vile propaganda to smear the young lawyer and teacher telling the NDC to stop criticising the judgment because they didn’t get what they wanted using Abdulai to mount the suit. I reached out to him and confirmed he was honoured by the NPP with a certificate for a good job done in their first election victory in the Fourth Republic.

That’s two-decade ago and he quit politics since then. But if politicians see labelling someone as partisan is how to destroy them as dishonest and without integrity, isn’t that self-indicting? MPs damaged Ghana’s reputation over an issue and it has taken this young man who is building a growing law firm to secure a solution to avoid the repeating embarrassment and haemorrhage to government business by the opposition.

Let’s not destroy young people with promise for this country if we can’t support them. They are human and will make mistakes, but it is wrong to shoot and kill their dreams for not being partisan or openly so. There are politicians who are impartial and have not lost their sense of good judgement and justice.

Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vamorwor. I google this name and what an impressive CV with great promise that greets me. He is a consummate academic with iconoclastic ideas, challenging the status quo to force institutional reforms for a better life, especially for suffering people who must get the best of democratic leadership that believes in progressive alternatives for reconstructing a more equitable society.

How do I know this? Just by going through the Cambridge research student’s social media messages and listening to him since he became what he calls “the accidental convener for #FixTheCountry”, and that’s when I, like most of you, got to know him. The first time I met him must have been recently at the Ashaiman police station.

He told me applying for bail for himself and leaving the many inmates, poor and forgotten, was simply not good enough, and that is when I appreciated his attempts including at the Supreme Court to fight the status quo for a greater good.

If an accused is not to be detained by police for more than 48 hours if they won’t grant him or her bail, and if they are thus compelled to produce this accused before a court so he or she can apply for bail, what justice or logic dictates that it is okay to present such a person, charged with certain offences, before a court that cannot grant them bail but can effectively remand them into custody until such time that they can afford the services of a lawyer to apply for bail for them in a higher court with the power to grant bail?

Those who can’t afford may have to rot in custody even without trial? It is gratifying to know Oliver will continue this noble pursuit? I interviewed him for the first edition of Newsfile for 2022 and got a better sense of what drives him.

I am Samson Lardy ANYENINI. My surname translates “bear no false witness”. I believe in the Ghana democratic project and that its future is in your men and women like Justice Abdulai and Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormawor. Do not kill the promise of a better future. That’s My Take.

March 19, 2022 - Samson Lardy ANYENINI