Omanghana
Former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has publicly broken with the prosecution of an opposition party organiser who was arrested and charged over comments made about him on TikTok, calling on police and the Attorney-General to drop the case entirely.
The organiser, Prince Aboagye, a 39-year-old lotto agent who also serves as the National Democratic Congress’s Branch Organiser for Agona West, was arrested after a viral TikTok video surfaced in which he allegedly made offensive and insulting remarks about Bawumia. Police say they were alerted to the video on July 18. Aboagye was subsequently charged with offensive conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace, along with publishing false news, and pleaded not guilty when arraigned. An Accra Circuit Court granted him bail of GH¢200,000 with three sureties, one of whom had to be backed by landed property; the case has been adjourned to August 19.
In a statement issued Wednesday through his communications office, titled “Dr. Bawumia Calls for the Discontinuation of Prosecutions Undertaken in His Name,” the NPP’s 2028 flagbearer said he had neither filed a complaint against Aboagye nor authorized any legal action on his behalf. Court records cited in local reporting indicate the case was in fact brought by the Ghana Police Service itself, not by Bawumia or anyone connected to him.
Bawumia argued that he has weathered years of criticism, insults and false claims over the course of his public career without ever turning to state power to silence critics, and said he does not want that to change now. He framed his position as a matter of principle: that offensive speech should be met with better speech, and falsehoods corrected with facts, rather than addressed through arrests, courtrooms and what he called burdensome bail conditions imposed on ordinary citizens. He said Ghana’s democracy is strengthened, not weakened, when critics and opponents can speak freely without fear of prosecution.
The former vice president went further, saying he had forgiven Aboagye and wished him well, and urged the Police Service and Attorney-General to discontinue not just this case but any similar prosecutions brought in his name going forward. He also called for Aboagye’s immediate release so he could return to his family and livelihood, and appealed to political actors on all sides to focus their energy on issues that matter more directly to ordinary Ghanaians.
The intervention has drawn support from outside Bawumia’s own party. Kofi Bentil, vice president of the policy think tank IMANI Africa, endorsed the call, describing the prosecution as excessive given the circumstances.
The case lands amid a broader regional conversation about the use of state security and legal apparatus against government critics and political opponents, a pattern civil society groups have flagged in a number of African countries in recent years. Bawumia’s decision to publicly ask for leniency toward a member of a rival party — rather than let the prosecution run its course — is likely to be read as a deliberate signal ahead of the 2028 election cycle, though his statement framed the request strictly in terms of free-speech principle rather than political strategy.
It remains to be seen whether the Attorney-General’s office will act on the request before the case resumes in court next month.
Source: Omanghana/SP
