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15.05.2021 Feature Article

The Criminal Arrogance of ASEPA’s Mensah Thompson

The Criminal Arrogance of ASEPAs Mensah Thompson
15.05.2021 LISTEN

It is nothing short of criminally absurd for the Executive-Director of the so-called Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), Mr. Mensah Thompson, to cavalierly presume to lecture Judge Christina Cann – I hope I have her name accurately spelled out and identified – on what form of sentencing or judicial disciplinary measures the aforementioned judge ought to have imposed or not imposed on Ms. Rosemond Alade Brown, the actress and notorious pornography-prone social media fixture by the professional or artistic pseudonym of Akuapem Poloo (See “It Should’ve Been Community Service for Akuapem Poloo – ASEPA” Modernghana.com 4/16/21).

If Mr. Thompson thinks that he has a better sense of the sort of sentencing that Judge Cann should have imposed on Akuapem Poloo, let the ASEPA boss apply for a judicial appointment to enable this social parasite and nuisance do what he and those who reason like this pest think is the right thing to do. At any rate, why does Mr. Thompson suppose that, somehow, he has special authorization and/or dispensation to lecture the rest of us, that is, the nation at large, about precisely what constitutes the fact of whether Ms. Brown clearly overstepped the bounds of social and moral decency or not, when the social media vixen and hobo posed nude photographs of herself and her 7-year-old son on various Internet media websites?

You see, such self-righteous asininity reminds me of an incident that the late world-class Nigerian novelist and educator and public intellectual and scholar, Prof. Chinua Achebe, celebrated author of “Things Fall Apart” (1958), told about a public reading of his novel titled “No Longer at Ease,” part of a trilogy, that includes “Arrow of God,” hosted in Ghana in the early 1970s, at which a young Ghanaian woman schoolteacher who what attended the reading insisted that the ending of the novel was wrong and inappropriate because it did not conform to the “romantic” expectations of the critic. I don’t quite recall the precise response that a livid Prof. Achebe reports as having given this presumptuous nitwit. But that was exactly what the globally renowned and award-winning novelist, critic and thinker reported as having thought about his impudent critic. Anyway, as one social media commentator cryptically and wittily noted: “If the courts had not stepped into the hullaballoo or brouhaha that swirled [up] in the wake of the Akuapem Poloo outrage, many members of the Ghanaian public would have bitterly complained about a lethargic law-enforcement system and morbid judicial inertia.”

The commentator had not used precisely the words quoted above, but he had surely meant the full meaning of the same. Even as Ms. Rachel Appoh, the Mahama-appointed and -fired former Deputy Minister for Children, Gender and Social Protection, noted in the wake of the criminal prosecution and judicial sentencing of Akuapem Poloo, it was morally self-righteous so-called Civil Society Organization (CSO) leaders like ASEPA’s Mr. Thompson, she actually mentioned another CSO claimant or pretender to the advocacy of children’s protection, who had vigorously campaigned for Ms. Brown to be promptly and swiftly thrown under the proverbial bus. Funnily, now the same characters are unctuously and downright hypocritically reacting as if they never craved the disciplinary comeuppance delivered Akuapem Poloo by Judge Christina Cann.

Then also, there is this idiotic screed by Mr. Thompson in which the latter presumes to pontifically enlighten Judge Cann about what the bona fide judicial expert clearly appreciates much better than an inescapably sexist and self-infatuated Mr. Thompson. Just take this quote for just one striking and ready example, Dear Reader: “Even in crimes such as petty stealing, flouting of traffic regulations, disturbance of the public peace, etc., we have constantly advocated the use of noncustodial sentencing. Our prisons are over-congested [Heavily congested?] and dehumanized [Dehumanizing?] and do not offer and proper means of reformation[,] which is the real intent of custodial sentencing.” You see, Dear Reader, this sort of moral and intellectually bankrupt judicial interference has significantly contributed to the abysmally low level of justice delivery in the country than the practical reality on the ground, vis-à-vis the fact of whether, indeed, there exists a morally untenable crisis of confidence in the level and quality of justice generally delivered by the country’s judicial establishment.

As for the question of a convicted Akuapem Poloo’s being a single mother, while this ought to be taken into account as a mitigating factor in her rather slap-on-the-wrist or kid-glove sentencing, what is even more significant to consider here is the fact that her being the mother of a 7-year-old does not seem to have any remarkably mattered to the criminal convict one way or another; all that clearly seemed to have mattered to Ms. Brown was her ego-boosting popularity and, very likely, whatever margin of profits the convict stood to reap from the same. Else, this celebrity convict would also have weighed up the far-reaching implications and consequences of her actions. It is also crystal clear here that the welfare of Ms. Rosemond Brown’s son was not even among the least bit of the worries of this seemingly irredeemably afflicted social media vermin. So, why would any deep-thinking observer suppose, one way or another, that Akuapem Poloo really gives a hoot what her emotionally, psychologically and morally erratic and decadent behavior has on her son?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 16, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]

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