Fellow Ghanaians,
There is a sickness in our Republic. It is one that is eating away at our democracy, corroding public trust, and mocking the very Constitution that is supposed to protect us all. It is the cynical, endless weaponization of our security and justice institutions by the political class by both the NDC and the NPP whenever they are in power. Each time the colours change, the script stays the same: opponents are hounded, activists are harassed, journalists are silenced, and citizens are detained under flimsy pretexts. Both sides cry foul when they are victims, but as soon as the wheel turns, they gleefully repeat the same abuses. That, fellow Ghanaians, is not democracy. That is tyranny on rotation.
Let us not mince words. Under President Akufo-Addo’s NPP, we saw how laws meant to protect order were turned into weapons of suppression. Journalists, particularly those sympathetic to the NDC, were dragged to police stations under the so-called “publication of false news” law. Protesters were teargassed and beaten for daring to exercise their constitutional rights. Opposition members, then the NDC, were targeted with cynical prosecutions, and bail hearings turned into political theatre. For eight years, dissent was treated as a crime.
But today, the NDC sits in power, and what do we see? The same movie, just with different actors. Chairman Wontumi, the NPP’s Ashanti Regional Chairman, was arrested and detained for over a week simply because he could not meet outrageous bail conditions imposed by EOCO. Abdul Hanan, the former CEO of the Buffer Stock Company, suffered the same fate, locked away for more than a week while lawyers scrambled to negotiate impossible bail demands. Just last week, it was the turn of Kofi Akpaloo, presidential candidate and leader of the LPG. Arrested, slapped with bail conditions so burdensome that a man presumed innocent remained effectively incarcerated for a week. This is not justice. This is cruelty disguised as law.
And the police have joined the orchestra of abuse. Sir Obama Pokuase, a social media activist, was arrested and detained for days over flimsy allegations of sharing videos of “rogue elements” wielding weapons. The police statement claimed he was only being “assisted” in investigations, yet he was dragged in handcuffs like a hardened criminal. And then now, the most egregious of them all: the arrest of Kwame Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye DC, NPP’s Bono Regional Chairman. His “crime”? Insults and criticisms of the Inspector-General of Police. In any functioning democracy, that is free speech. But in Ghana today, it became the grounds for nearly two weeks of remand custody. Think about that. Criticism of a public official leading to detention. That is not democracy.
But it gets worse. The judge who presided over Abronye’s case not only err; he embarrassed the entire judiciary with pronouncements that will go down in infamy. He quoted the notorious line, “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech,” attributing it to Robert Mugabe, when in fact it is usually linked to Idi Amin. Imagine that a Ghanaian judge, in 2025, is borrowing wisdom from the playbook of African dictators to justify silencing a citizen. He went further to say, astonishingly, that not all citizens are equal. He cited George Orwell’s Animal Farm, declaring, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” as if it were a guiding principle of justice rather than a satirical warning about tyranny. He even talked about how he had denied an NDC supporter bail under similar circumstances, and so he would not grant Abronye bail either. This is not jurisprudence. This is vendetta. This is law reduced to personal bias. This is a shame.
And let us be clear: this is not a partisan problem. It is not about whether you support the NDC or the NPP. It is about the principle of justice. But what do we see? Each time abuses occur, the supporters of the ruling party find ingenious ways to excuse them. When it was Akufo-Addo’s government unleashing the police on protesters, NPP supporters cheered. Today, when this government preside over these excesses, NDC supporters don’t seem to care. But here is the bitter truth: the police never change. EOCO never changes. The BNI never changes. What changes is the political leadership at the top. And those same institutions you are cheering today will be turned against you tomorrow when power shifts. If you think you are safe because “your party is in government,” that is just foolhardiness.
That is why we must demand better for each other. If you keep quiet when your opponent’s rights are trampled, do not be surprised when yours are next. If you cheer when an opponent is detained unlawfully, do not cry when your ally suffers the same fate. Because when you reduce justice to political colors, you destroy justice for everyone.
We must not allow bail to be weaponized. Bail is a constitutional right, grounded in the presumption of innocence. Its purpose is to ensure a suspect appears in court, not to punish them before trial. Onerous bail conditions that are impossible to meet are no different from denying bail outright. Detaining a man for weeks because he cannot produce millions in sureties is not justice; it is incarceration by proxy. If a suspect is truly a flight risk or a danger to society, let the court say so and deny bail with reason. But this halfway cruelty, pretending to grant bail while ensuring the conditions cannot be met, is dishonest and unconstitutional.
Look at the trajectory we are on. Today, insults are a crime. Tomorrow, criticism will be a crime. The next day, silence itself will be a crime because silence will be deemed suspicious. That is how democracies die. Not in one big bang, but through the steady normalisation of small abuses. We laugh, we shrug, we justify, and then one day, we wake up to find that we are no longer citizens but subjects.
And so I say to the NPP: you have no moral authority to cry victim today, because you perfected this weaponization when you were in power. But I also say to the NDC: you have no excuse for repeating the very same sins you condemned yesterday. Both parties should hang their heads in shame. You have both turned justice into politics, and politics into vengeance. And you have both taught the Ghanaian citizen a bitter lesson: that in Ghana, your rights are conditional, dependent not on the Constitution, but on who sits in Jubilee House.
This must end. Justice is not a toy. Institutions are not party militias. Judges are not supposed to sound like Idi Amin. Bail is not supposed to be a backdoor to indefinite detention. The police must not be the armed wing of whichever party is in government. EOCO must not act like a political hit squad. We must demand reforms, real reforms that insulate our institutions from partisan capture.
Fellow Ghanaians, this is bigger than NDC versus NPP. This is about the very soul of our democracy. If we allow this cycle to continue, if we accept that each party in turn can weaponise the state against its opponents, then we are doomed to perpetual instability. Because no loser will trust the system, and no winner will resist the temptation to abuse it. And in that vicious cycle, it is the ordinary citizen who suffers.
Remember Martin Niemöller’s famous words: “First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” In Ghana today, we must speak out, no matter which party we belong to. Because if we keep silent when others are abused, there will be no one left to speak when our turn comes.
Fellow Ghanaians, let us defend justice. Let us demand better. Let us say enough is enough. Not only because those affected today may be persons we don’t like, but because it may be you next.
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