MARTIN AMIDU’S REACTION TO BAWKU MEDIATION REPORT AND GOVERNMENT STATEMENT
MARTIN AMIDU’S REACTION TO THE BAWKU MEDIATION REPORT AND GOVERNMENT STATEMENT.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
I listened to the entire Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) video recording of the alleged final circus performance on: “The formal presentation of the Bawku Mediation Report to President John Dramani Mahama .... “ on YouTube on Wednesday 16 November 2025 in the night of the same day and read the “Government of Ghana Official Statement on the Bawku Conflict Mediation Report on the night of 17 November 2025. I came away with the firm conviction that the whole performance and government statement have no foundation under the 1992 Constitution and the laws of Ghana.
Let me say from the onset that I recognize that I am just only one of the millions of citizens of Ghana under the 1992 Constitution. I also know that there is a vast Ghanaian socio-cultural mentality of sycophantic compatriots who would ask who I am to express my opinion on matters involving the President of Ghana and the revered Asantehene. My first answer is that I was socialized throughout life into a family that frowned upon hypocrisy. Secondly, the 31 December Revolution empowered me to defend my conscience. Thirdly, and more fundamentally, the 1992 Constitution which I took part in drafting as the Chairman of the House Committee of the Consultative Assembly, 1991, and in particular Article 3 of the 1992 Constitution thereof enables me as one citizen out of the millions to defend the Republic of Ghana as by law established. In short, those who know my life from childhood know that: I Martin Alamisi Burns Kaizer Amidu will stand alone even if I am in a minority of one Ghanaian citizen. (My middle name is not “Burnes” as the media erroneously continues repeating but “Burns” derived from “Sir Alan Burns” as my classmates used to called me in Bawku Middle Mixed Boarding School in the 1960s – Karimu Mahama @ Starboy are you there?)
Be that as it may, I will endeavour to limit and to be measured in my reaction to the Mediation Report and the Government Statement on it in the hope that going forward the government will pursue reconciliation and peacebuilding in the Bawku Conflict based solely on the status quo and the enforcement of the existing law on the Bawku Affairs.
THE 1992 CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF GHANA
The Preamble to the Government of Ghana Official Statement
The Government of Ghana Official Statement on the Bawku Conflict Mediation Report cannot be an official Government Statement anchored under the 1992 Constitution and the laws of Ghana. The second preamble to the purported government Statement contradicts the content of the main text of the statement when it states that: “In keeping with its unwavering commitment to peace, constitutional order, the rule of law, and national cohesion, the Government hereby formally states it’s position on the findings and recommendations of the Mediation Report as follows;”
Endorsement of the Mediation Report and Its Recommendations
The Government refused or failed to state any provision of law or the Constitution upon which the preamble to the government statement was based because there is none supporting the appointment of the Asantehene as a sole mediator of the Bawku Conflict and there is further none to support the government statement empowering the government to state in paragraph 1of the Statement, inter alia, that: “The government fully endorses or accepts all the findings and recommendations contained in the Mediation Report”. The 1992 Constitution enjoins the President and the executive branch to be at all times transparent and accountable to the sovereign people of Ghana, of whom I am one, for the legal and constitutional basis of its exercise of power which includes the appointed mediator’s powers or jurisdiction, and the provision(s) under which the government statement was issued. One cannot put something,(the government statement), on nothing, (the mediator’s report), the mediator’s power being pertinently unconstitutional and unlawful.
The Asantehene’s mediation whether pursuant to Nana Akufo-Addo’s request or President Mahama’s request is not a customary mediation under Asante tradition and customary law because the Bawku-Naba and the Nayiri are not subjects of the Asante Stool or residents of Asante to bring them under its customs. The Bawku-Naba and the Nayiri are Supreme Customary Rulers of their respective exclusive traditional areas in their own right for which reason the 1992 Constitution and the Chieftaincy Act provides for how disputes between them may be resolved and appealed against. Indeed, Asante is not part of the Mole-Dagbani group or affiliated to them for one to say that there is a traditional and customary nexus connecting the Kusasi and the Mamprusi chiefdoms to the Asante chiefdom.
The 1992 Constitution mandates “a government of laws, and not of men” as its main foundation of democracy and the rule of law. Consequently, neither President Nana Akufo-Addo’s nor President Mahama’s will is lawful unless grounded in the due process of law in willing it. Former President Akufo-Addo sabotaged whatever request he had made to the Asantehene in 2023 when in October 2024 he undermined the process by refusing to enforce the status quo in the Bawku Conflict but rather enabled its escalation with Mrs. Gertrude Torkornoo’s incompetence as the Chief Justice in the timing of the Court of Appeal decision of 17 October 2024. (There is a history to how President Akufo-Addo, as a Member of Parliament and Minister for Foreign Affairs, courted the Bawku-Naba for electoral votes since a meeting between them was facilitated by the late John Ndebugri, then Member of Parliament for Zebilla in Accra in 2006, and Nana Addo’s betrayal of that trust in October 2024).
President Mahama cannot, therefore, base his request to the Asantehene on former President Akufo-Addo’s request which he knew was not based on any law and which the former president did not intend to be taken seriously. President Mahama, therefore, has his own cross to carry and not to rely on Nana Akufo-Addo’s previous request. I am consequently asking President Mahama to inform Ghanaians transparently and accountably the law under which he requested the Asantehene to mediate the Bawku Conflict instead of enforcing the status quo ante the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution which even the Kufuor and Akufo-Addo governments did not challenge and tried to enforce by befriending the Bawku-Naba for electoral votes. President Mahama enforced the status quo during his previous tenure, so what went wrong this time round to warrant him farming out a presidential responsibility outside the constitutional scheme to a mediator? “Kohia wishes to know!” vandal mate.
In the absence of the government stating the legal basis of the Asantehene’s Mediation Report, I dare say that the concluding circus enacted and performed at the Jubilee House on 16 December 2025 and the Government of Ghana Statement on the Bawku Conflict Mediation Report of 17 October 2025 which have no constitutional or legal basis appears as a gargantuan political scam by the government on the Bawku Conflict to justify the needless deaths between 7 January 2025 and 16 December 2025 which in my estimation exceeds those of the past eight years under the previous regime. The gravity of the matter is that no amount of money can pay for those precious lives of innocent citizens of Ghana, most of whom voted on 7 December 2024.
Socio-economic Recovery and Development of Bawku
Without validating the legal basis of the findings and recommendations of Asantehene’s Mediation Report on the Bawku Conflict, I see the “Socio-Economic Recovery and Development of Bawku” segment of the government statement anchored upon the mediation report as another Alfred Woyome looting case in the making. I believe that the government of Ghana has spent more than One Billion Ghana Cedis (GHS1,000,000,000) managing the Bawku conflict in the past nine years. The composition of the management of the “One Billion Ghana Cedis (GHS1,000,000,000) Bawku Revitalization Fund” and the high-level Committee Chaired by The Minister for Finance, ....., who also serves as the Acting Minister for Defence;..” with the Upper East Regional Minister, and the Majority Leader who is the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central demonstrates how ineffective the utilization of the funds will be as it will be informed more by electoral politics than a reconciling and united national endeavour. It also smells of pure crony capitalism dressed as conflict resolution.
The perception that money can resolve identity-based and intractable conflicts is wrong. On the contrary identity based and intractable conflicts generate their own political economy which brings to the beneficiaries, whether warlords, security personnel, government officials, members of parliament, political parties, civil societies organizations, or others Billions of Ghana Cedis at the cost of innocent lives lost yearly on the violence attendant upon the conflict.
Call for National Support and Reconciliation
The government can only call “...on all traditional authorities, political leaders, youth groups, civil society organizations, religious bodies, development partners and the broader citizenry to support the peace-building and reconciliation process in the spirit of unity, restraint, and patriotism” when the Bawku Conflict Mediation Report is founded within the framework of the 1992 Constitution. How does one expect a national consensus for peace-building and reconciliation when one promotes the political economy of the conflict by a fund which is to “be managed by a high-level Committee” that is pertinently socio-politico-religiously partisan within the conflict environment and nationally? Radix malorum est cupiditas!
CONCLUSION
When I read paragraph 7 of the Government Statement which stated inter alia that: “...In response, His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama has directed the ...... “ I wondered whether the allocation of the “One Billion Ghana Cedis (GHS1,000,000,000) Bawku Revitalisation Fund” was pursuant to an appropriation by Parliament, a Cabinet decision, or out of the President’s personal generosity to the people of Bawku and its environs.
President Mahama’s constitutional responsibility is: “...to be faithful and true to the Republic of Ghana; ...to at all times preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana; and ..dedicate ..to the service and well-being of the people of the Republic of Ghana and to do right to all manner of persons” and let posterity determine his place in history of Ghana. Sycophancy and stomach politics will destroy and not help the legacy of President John Dramani Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) during this tenure of his government. The 1992 Constitution demands at all times a government of laws, and not of men!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
18 December 2025.