KISSI AGYEBENG INCOMPETENTLY MADE A MARTYR OUT OF MARTIN KPEBU
KISSI AGYEBENG INCOMPETENTLY MADE A MARTYR OUT OF MARTIN KPEBU.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
INTRODUCTION
The arrest and detention of Martin Luther Kpebu, a well known constitutional activist and anti-corruption campaigner, on 3 December 2025 and the onerous bail terms imposed on him to secure his freedom for the summary offence of obstructing an authorized officer of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) from performing a function under Section 69(3) of the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959) is not just an abuse of power. It also confirms the incompetence, inexperience, investigatory and prosecutorial overreach, unfathomable vindictiveness, and disregard for the rights and freedoms guaranteed citizens by the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, which he has always gotten away with since he assumed the office on 9 August 2021.
The whole narrative by the OSP that Martin Kpebu had an altercation with soldiers and police officers guarding the entrance to the OSP for which reason he was arrested and detained not by the soldiers and police officers at the entrance but subsequently by other authorised officers of the OSP in an office of the OSP are red herrings. If those narratives were true, Martin Kpebu should have been arrested at the point of altercation with the soldiers and police men at the entrance and not after he had entered the main offices and met the officers of the OSP who had invited him and to whom he lodged a complaint against the behaviour of the guardsmen at the entrance gate.
In any case, the soldiers and police officers guarding the entrance of the OSP head office are not authorized officers of the OSP either by virtue of recruitment or secondment to the OSP under Section 21 of Act 959, nor were they performing a function related to a corruption or corruption-related offences under Section 3 of the Act or the pursuant OSP Regulations for which Martin Kpebu could have obstructed them. Those soldiers and police officers have not as a matter of fact submitted themselves to be bound by the disciplinary code of the OSP under Regulation 34 nor have they taken the oath of office and oath of secrecy set out in the Second Schedule before assuming or performing a function under Regulation 35 of the Office of the Special Prosecutor (Operations) Regulations, 2018 (LI 2374) to clothe them with the status of authorised officers performing a function under the Act for purposes of Section 69 of Act 959.
On 3 December 2025, however, the hens came home to roost when after several days of banter between the Special Prosecutor and OSP on the one hand, and Martin Kpebu on the other, starting from or about 5 November 2025 to 3 December 2025, the Special Prosecutor allowed his blood to boil and for his reason to desert its seat in what appears to have been an orchestrated and premeditated arrest and detention of the well known anti- corruption activist. Any professional and experienced investigator and prosecutor would have known the basic rule that warns against the exercise of discretion that creates martyrs out of witnesses or suspects who exhibit a tenacious habit of seeking support from the court of public opinion as demonstrated by Martin Kpebu throughout this discourse with Kissi Agyebeng.
FOLLY OF OSP INVESTIGATING THE SP & OSP FOR CORRUPTION
The OSP’s invitation on 18 November 2025 to Martin Kpebu and TV3 “to assist investigations over allegations made by Martin Kpebu that there’s corruption at the OSP” was the first warning sign that the OSP was biting more than it could chew. On 19 November 2025, a friend emailed me the interview Martin Kpebu granted to TV3 which elicited the OSP invitation. See https://www.facebook.com/TV3GH/videos/thekeypoints-martin-kpebu-alleges-that-the-office-of-the-special-prosecutor-has-/4145383572394568/. After I listened to the interview, I responded to my interlocutor as follows:
“Received with thanks. Kissi is looking for trouble with inviting Martin Kpebu and TV3 for investigation on the allegations. His inexperience makes him think that by inviting them, TV3 will give up Kpebu and conflict him as bringing the petition for Kissi's removal during a pending investigation. This does not prevent others from submitting removal petitions against him. This invitation can open a pandora box from which Kissi can be exposed for the unconstitutional conduct that continues to cause economic loss to the state by virtue of the fact [that] former President Nana Akufo-Addo never appointed any of his category B staff by letter under his signature or delegated same to Kissi who signed those appointment letters. The Public Services Commission didn't participate in any interview for their appointment as well. I attached the evidence from the PSC on this to my petition for his removal and the PSC cannot deny the unconstitutional recruitment and appointment of Directors of the OSP by Kissi. The decision of the Supreme Court in ... [Ghana Bar Association & Others v Attorney-General & Others] renders Kissi usurpation of Presidential powers of appointments null and void ab initio and unratifiable by the OSP Board. Let's quantify the financial loss he has caused to the state with only this.”
As the days went by Martin Kpebu doubled down on the invitation to assist the OSP by a repetition of the original allegations of corruption sprinkled with further allegations of corruption in the media against the Special Prosecutor (who personifies the OSP) and the OSP. It seemed to me absurd from the beginning that the Special Prosecutor was inviting Martin Kpebu to assist investigations into allegations of corruption against himself and the OSP despite the conflict-of-interest situation in which the OSP found itself.
Martin Kpebu on the other hand realizing the folly of the Special Prosecutor (SP) in inviting him to assist the investigations into himself (as the SP) and the OSP, capitalized on Kissi Agyebeng’s inexperience and incompetence to the embarrassment of the OSP. The fact that it is reprehensible for one to be a judge in one’s own cause, is a basic principle of fairness even at the level of public investigations: in the case of the OSP in particular all powers of the office are vested in the Special Prosecutor. Mr. Kpebu stuck to his advantage over Kissi Agyebeng like a leech would on its victim and insisted on an independent committee of enquiry or investigation team on each of the two previous occasions, he met the staff of the OSP to assist the alleged investigations. Both parties had invested in the conflict and escalated it to such an extent that the first person to blink was going to lose the narrative and be the demon in the court of public opinion.
As events unfolded from the invitation to Martin Kpebu to assist the Special Prosecutor and the OSP on 18 November 2025 to the morning of 3 December 2025 when Martin Kpebu granted an interview to the media before entering the premises of the OSP, it became clear as day light that Kissi Agyebeng and his OSP were losing the narrative in the court of public opinion on the power of the OSP to investigate accusations of corruption and corruption-related offences against itself.
On the morning of 3 December 2025, Mr. Kpebu before he entered the premises of the OSP for the third meeting with the OSP granted an interview as usual to the media near the premises of the OSP in which he made the irrevocable commitment of not returning to the OSP for any further engagement if the same subordinate officers of the Special Prosecutor constituted the investigation team instead of an independent committee not subject to the direction or control of the Special Prosecutor. See - Martin Kpebu arrives at OSP HQ to meet investigators over allegations against Kissi Agyebeng.
The irrevocable commitment made to the media and to the country by Martin Kpebu constituted a challenge to the authority of the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, who has always thrived on enforcing respect through the use of fear and intimidation tactics instead of earning it. In the circumstances, Kissi Agyebeng, did what he has been used to doing since his appointment as the Special Prosecutor: use state power to put fear into the citizen and intimidate him into submission by looking through the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959) and charging the challenging citizen with an offence as a way of subjugating him. Consequently, the only way Kissi Agyebeng could save face was to compel Martin Kpebu’s continued attendance to the OSP despite his earlier irrevocable commitment not to do so after the third meeting unless his demands for an independent investigation team were met by the OSP. The offence of obstruction of authorized officers of the OSP in the performance of their duties under Section 69(3) of Act 959 looked attractive to Kissi Agyebeng in the absence of any grounds to charge Martin Kpebu with any corruption or corruption-related offences.
Martin Kpebu, according to the OSP’s own public narrative, was placed under arrest and detention with onerous bails conditions while he was waiting for the start of the meeting with the OSP in the interview room. The OSP had gone to cross-check Martin Kpebu’s complaint only to return to place him under arrest and whisked him secretly to an undisclosed detention centre. Instead of investigating Martin Kpebu’s complaint against the officers manning the OSP entrance, Kissi Agyebeng decided to charge him with the more attractive offence of obstruction with onerous bail conditions to show him where power lay, notwithstanding the fact that in doing so Kissi Agyebeng was being investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge in his own cause against the dictates of fairness underpinning our constitutional concept of dispassionate and impartial administration of criminal justice.
This abuse of prosecutorial discretion on the part of Kissi Agyebeng to charge Martin Kpebu who had alleged corruption against Kissi Agyebeng and his office with the offence of obstruction of authorized officers of the OSP effectively shifted the focus from Martin Kpebu to the perceived overreach of Kissi Agyebeng in attempting to intimidate Mr. Kpebu which allowed Mr. Kpebu to control the public narrative and gain reputational advantage through his suffering or sacrifice in the fight against suspected corruption by Kissi Agyebeng, the Special Prosecutor and the OSP.
A fundamental principle of the exercise of investigatory and prosecutorial discretion is to avoid making a martyr out of a suspect or potential suspect in generating public sympathy for him by elevating him to the status of a victim suffering for a greater cause or principle such as fighting against corruption by the Special Prosecutor and the OSP which were themselves established by law to prevent and fight corruption in the nation. Kissi Agyebeng’s incompetence or vindictiveness made him to disregard this fundamental principle and made Martin Kpebu a martyr in fighting suspected corruption by Kissi Agyebeng himself and the OSP he oversees.
Kissi Agyebeng has exposed his own incompetence and vindictiveness as the Special Prosecutor to the entire world in the manner in which he handled the allegations of corruption made by Martin Kpebu against him and the OSP he supervises. The consequence has been the massive public disapproval of his conduct in unlawfully arresting and detaining Martin Kpebu with the draconian bail condition of the production of a landed property in Martin Kpebu’s own name. The public disapproval of the conduct of the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, over the years has now translated into an invitation by Parliament to the Special Prosecutor to brief the House on the circumstances under which he detained Martin Kpebu, a citizen under such “flimsy whimsical circumstances.” Kissi Agyebeng’s unprofessional conduct and his abrasive media seeking style of running the OSP has also given Parliament and a section of the public the opportunity to call for the abolition of the OSP as a waste on the public purse.
CONCLUSIONS
The incompetence, inexperience, investigatory and prosecutorial overreach, unfathomable vindictiveness, and disregard for the rights and freedoms guaranteed citizens by the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, which he has always gotten away with since he assumed the office on 9 August 2021 has now come home to roost in the unlawful arrest and detention of Martin Kpebu for daring to exercise his right and freedom to free speech in criticizing the investigatory and prosecutorial conduct of the Special Prosecutor and making serious allegations of corruption and corruption-related offences against him.
Once Parliament has invited the Special Prosecutor to brief it on the circumstances under which the Special Prosecutor ordered the arrest, detention, and grant of bail on onerous terms to Martin Kpebu, the public expects that Parliament will compel the OSP to submit proof that the military personnel and police officers manning the entrance gate of the OSP qualify as authorized officers of the OSP performing a function of the OSP under Section 3 of Act 959 and Regulations 34 and 35 of LI 2374 to have warranted the arrest in the first instance. I believe that Parliament after a thorough interrogation will find that the obstruction charge was only a decoy by the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, for silencing Martin Kpebu for his anti-corruption advocacy and activism in alleging corruption against OSP under the watch of Kissi Agyebeng. Everyday for thief man, one day for master!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
6 December 2025.