EOCO's Botched Arrest of Manhyia South MP
By Anonymous · 23 September 2026 · Politics
Greetings from the land you set free. I write with a heavy heart, a raised eyebrow, and a question I never thought I would have to ask: when did we start auditioning for the role of banana republic, and who told us we'd get the part?
Let me tell you what happened today at the Accra High Court.
A woman named Salomey Baffoe has been arrested in a matter connected to Ghana Jollof. Her lawyer is the Honourable Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, Member of Parliament for Manhyia South, and he came to court to defend her, as lawyers do. The case was adjourned to tomorrow, as cases are. Then, as he was leaving, the Economic and Organised Crime Office decided it was the perfect moment to arrest him. No serious institution does that.
Now, Osagyefo, you are imagining a squad: officers in uniform, a warrant in a folder, a calm word at the door of his car. Let me correct you. EOCO sent one lone lady. She wore green jeans, a ponytail and sunglasses, and carried no identification anyone could see. In full view of the court premises she walked up to a sitting Member of Parliament and invited him to join her in a pick-up, the way you'd offer someone a lift to Kaneshie market.
The Honourable Member, being a lawyer, asked the lawyerly question: who are you, and where is your authority? He found no ID and no warrant. So he did what any of us would do when a stranger in sunglasses asks us to climb into a pick-up. He left.
This next part is no joke. As his SUV pulled away, the lady was very nearly run over. She could have died today on the grounds of a court of justice, over an arrest that a letter and a phone call could have handled. She is somebody's daughter, perhaps somebody's mother. Whoever sent her out alone, without so much as a badge, gambled with her life to stage a spectacle.
I suspect the lady will need a good massage tonight. Chasing an SUV in jeans is not what the body signed up for. By morning I hope she has also learned her lessons: carry your ID, bring a warrant, and never let anyone send you alone to play Robocop at the High Court. I only wish the people who sent her would learn theirs as quickly.
EOCO now tells us the MP ignored two invitations since February. That is two invitations in seven months. Of all the days and places available, they picked the courthouse, minutes after he finished representing a client. They also picked the very season in which he has been speaking loudly about the government arresting and detaining citizens for exercising their fundamental human rights. What a coincidence. In Ghana, it seems, coincidences have excellent timing.
Osagyefo, you know better than anyone how this story goes. You gave us the Preventive Detention Act in 1958. We then spent decades learning, painfully, why a state must never get comfortable detaining its critics. We wrote the 1992 Constitution so that power would have to show its ID before it laid a hand on a citizen. Today, power showed up in jeans and sunglasses and forgot the ID.
This is how a banana republic is built. It rarely takes one big coup. It takes small absurdities that we laugh off: an arrest without a badge, an "invitation" that arrives by pick-up, a critic who becomes urgently wanted only after he opens his mouth. Each one is funny on its own. Together, they are not funny at all.
You told us, "Forward ever, backward never." Some days, Osagyefo, it feels as though someone has quietly put the country in reverse and is checking the rearview mirror with sunglasses on.
I still believe in the Ghana you dreamed of. In that Ghana, institutions are strong, the law is applied with dignity, and the only thing arrested in public is our attention, by a good plate of jollof. We are not there today. But we must say so, loudly, before the bananas ripen.
Let me find some "fried rice",
Ato_KD