Kofi Adams Dares Judge Oppong

The Deputy General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Kofi Adams has dared Justice Anthony Oppong to go back and preside over the Ya-Na murder trial if he knows his hands are “clean” over the recent accusations of biased levelled against.

Justice Oppong sitting on the murder case of the late overload of the Dagbon Traditional area Ya Na Yakubu Andani II has excused himself from the case, after the state asserted that the trial judge could not be fair in the proceedings

In recusing himself, Justice Anthony Oppong was forthright in his pronouncements against the Attorney General and the NDC when he charged the NDC party to desist from the “useless propaganda” against the bench.

According to him criticisms from members of the NDC towards the bench was weird and meritoriousness since the final judgement were not going to come from him but from members of the jury. He added that he had no control on the jury and could in no way influence their decision on the case.

Justice Oppong also demanding an unqualified apology from the Deputy Chief Justice Barton Oduro, who he said, described him (Justice Oppong) as a drunkard.

But contributing to a panel discussion on Newsfile on JoyFM, Mr. Kofi Adams said that the NDC as a party did not level any allegations of corruption against Justice Oppong but he (Justice Oppong) fired back at the NDC even though, “it was the A-G and his party” who accused him of bias.

“…if I were the AG’s department, I would make some information available to the appointing authority to see what can be done as far as this judge is concerned but I wasn’t too comfortable [because] the judge was very political, he ended up exposing himself when, in dealing with the issues raised by the prosecution and the Attorney-General, he sought to bring the NDC as a political party into this matter,” he said.

The Special Aide to Ex-president Rawlings pointed out that it was “state prosecutors” who raised concerns about the judge’s professionalism, adding that Justice Oppong brought in politics and tried to make it appear as if the A-G was against the whole judicial bench.

“When the judge was running away from the obvious [facts] that will face him if he should continue to sit on the case, he now tried to bring in politics and make it look like the AG was attacking the whole Bench,” he stated.

The A-G, according to Mr. Adams would have put out the evidence if Justice Oppong had not chickened out of the trial. He, however, disclosed that the A-G’s department was not ready to provide the evidence via radio stations since it was a professional body and knew the matter was very sensitive.

“…if the judge knew that he was clean, he should have stayed on and allow the case as they had started to continue to its logical conclusion but he ran away, he abandoned that course,” Mr. Kofi Adams added.

Source: Chris Joe Quaicoe/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Institute of Journalism