Crime Analyst and Certified Professional Investigator Ransford Nana Addo Jnr has condemned Ghana’s criminal system, stating that the system rarely achieves effective outcomes.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show (SMS) a day after two young individuals were convicted of murder in Kasoa, Central Region, Ransford Nana Addo emphasized that the convicts were held accountable solely because they were caught in the act. According to him, had they evaded capture, society would likely celebrate them for the wealth their ritual killing was intended to bring.
The recent case involved Nicholas Kini, who was 18 at the time he and a then 15-year-old accomplice murdered 10-year-old Ishmael Abdallah in pursuit of ritualistic wealth. Kini has since been sentenced to life imprisonment, while the juvenile accomplice will face sentencing in juvenile court.
Analyzing the case and broader implications, Ransford Nana Addo remarked on Ghanaian society’s inadequate response to serious crimes like this.
“Fortunately, it is only these small, small ones that have come to the fore and you hear, but the elephant in the room is that we are all aware that communities are springing up in this country where we have a lot of young people who belong to various groups who have built mansions and have fleets of vehicles and nobody is questioning where they got this money from.”
“Our criminal justice system has failed us because, in some jurisdictions, they address this with a very, very good law called ‘unexplained source of wealth.’ In our case, we’re still relying on the Criminal Offences Act of 1960, Act 29, requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed.”
“But how will you explain, assuming these boys killed the deceased, fixed him somewhere nobody got to know, the following year he was driving a Range Rover at the age of 19 or 18, he’s built a new shop for his mother, he’s bought a house in a prime area. As a people, are we saying that all the crimes that will be committed, all we want to see is to see people caught in the act before we trigger our intelligence agencies? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense at all for anybody to say that our laws on explained wealth, we should keep it the way it is.”