Even before the Koomson Committee conducting public inquiry into the Ejura disturbances gathers steam in its work, what appears to be a destructive scenario is developing, with the potential of undermining the committee’s work and bastardising its outcome prematurely.
As we would recall, as per the President’s lawful directive, the committee’s mandate is to probe the circumstances that led to the June 29, 2021 incident at Ejura Sekyedumase and submit a report with recommendations for appropriate action to be taken by the government.
Concerns
In what appears to be more of a plot than a genuine concern, the Vice-President of Imani Africa, Kofi Bentil, has claimed that most Ghanaians have no faith in the committee.
Kofi Bentil made that emphatic statement, without proffering any shred of evidence, on last Saturday Joy News’ elite but popular ‘Newsfile’ programme.
If he provided some evidence at all, he based that assertion on “the line of questions and comments from the members of the committee,” which he claimed “does not seem to be in relation to the Terms of Reference.”
According to him, he has found nobody, “not even one person who has any confidence in the committee”, and “it looks like they just assembled them to waste our money and insult our intelligence.”
He even accuses the committee of “searching for a narrative to support a preset story…”
In yet another attempt to discredit the work of the committee, host of another popular programme, Metro TV’s ‘Good Morning Ghana’, Randy Abbey, also raised similar concerns, describing questions posed by the committee’s members as “problematic.”
Normal
Like court proceedings, we expect that committee’s sittings and hearings to be thoroughly assessed by experts, the media or even the plain unlettered. That is perfectly in order.
But we would also agree that what we cannot find fault with at this material moment is the credibility of members of the panel or the legal instruments based on which the Minister of Interior appointed them or drew up the Terms of Reference.
In that regard, we find it strange how anybody would want to hastily jump into making conclusions that the committee’s work is a waste of time and resources, and that members of the committee are “searching for a narrative to support a pre-set story…”
We believe these are very unfair comments that seek to cast doubts about the integrity of the committee’s members, and further seeks to prepare the minds of people to reject the report of the committee.
We would, therefore, urge all Ghanaians to avoid certain slants that can bastardise the probe and appeal to the ‘political appetites’ of the real criminals and people with a political axe to grind against the government.
We particularly appeal to our social commentators to be patient with the committee, as it continues with its probe, instead of prematurely passing judgement on its work even before it report is prepared and issued.
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