16 public officials, and nine Board Chairmen, including Kofi Totobi Quakyi, were cited in Wilberforce Asare’s asset declaration petition to CHRAJ, so why are pro-opposition media targeting him alone, even though CHRAJ has cleared him?
Why are the naysayers not focusing on the others who have been dealt similarly?
Justice is not a predator that picks and chooses its prey based on the shine of a name; it is a blind goddess whose scales must remain indifferent to the person standing before it.
Yet, in the unfolding drama of asset declarations and the recent findings of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), we are witnessing a peculiar phenomenon, a focused fire directed at Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi, while a forest of silence surrounds his peers.
The facts are as clear as the constitutional ink they are written in. A petitioner, claiming to be acting on the noble impulse of civic duty, dragged a list of public officials before the altar of CHRAJ.
The charge? A failure to declare assets. It is a foundational requirement of our democracy. a transparency ritual designed to ensure that those who enter the halls of power do not exit with pockets heavier than their service justifies.
However, when the dust settled, CHRAJ delivered its verdict. Mr Quakyi, the Board Chairman of the Ghana Gas Company, had indeed filed his declarations. The moment the petition landed, the omission was rectified. In the eyes of the law, a corrected wrong is a grievance settled.
CHRAJ cleared him. Yet, the air is thick with calls for his head. One must ask: why is the spotlight fixed so intensely on the veteran, while the others who stood beside him in the same dock have faded into the shadows of public indifference?
In Ghana, we have mastered the art of the “targeted crusade.” We ignore the systemic failure and instead hunt the individual. If the petitioner’s goal was truly the sanctity of the public office, why is the demand for Presidential discipline restricted to one man?
To demand that President John Dramani Mahama punish a man whom the constitutional arbiter of integrity has already cleared is not an exercise in accountability; it is an exercise in political cannibalism.
The constitution is not a buffet where one can pick the rules they like and discard those that offer redemption. If we respect CHRAJ as the gatekeeper of administrative justice, we must respect its power to exonerate as much as its power to condemn.
To pursue Totobi Quakyi beyond the gates of CHRAJ is to suggest that the Commission’s word is insufficient. It is an assault on the institution itself.
What, then, do they want the President to do? Should he override the constitutional body? Should he become judge, jury, and executioner in a matter that has already reached its legal climax?
To ask the President to strike down a man who has complied with the regulations, albeit late, is to ask for a precedent of executive overreach that would haunt this republic for generations.
We see here the juxtaposition of the letter of the law against the spirit of the vendetta.
The focus on Quakyi is a distraction. It is a cynical attempt to turn a procedural lapse into a moral catastrophe.
While we obsess over a man who has checked the boxes and faced the music, we are silent about the others. Where are their names? Why have their omissions been forgotten? This selective amnesia suggests that the petition was never about the assets, but about the man.
Wealth is not a crime, and service is not a sentence. If a man serves and subjects himself to the scrutiny of the state, and that state finds him cleared, he deserves the peace of his exoneration.
To continue the hounding is to tell every public servant that even if you follow the law, even if you rectify your errors, the mob will still come for you if your name is big enough.
Let us broaden the scope. This is about whether we believe in the rule of law or the rule of the loudest voice. If we allow Quakyi to be the sacrificial lamb for a collective oversight, we lose the moral high ground. Accountability must be a blanket, not a spotlight. It must cover everyone, or it is merely a tool for harassment.
President Mahama is a student of the law and a guardian of the constitution. He knows that his pen cannot be used to ink a punishment where the law has found no crime. Mr Totobi Quakyi has stood before the Commission. He has answered. He has been cleared. To demand more is to demand blood where justice has already spoken.
In the end, we must decide: do we want a transparent government, or do we simply want to see powerful men fall? If it is the former, then we should be asking about the others. If it is the latter, then we are not citizens; we are merely spectators in a coliseum of malice. Justice has been served. Let the man work.
By Raymond Ablorh
