‘You better shut up’: A Ghanaian family’s relentless yearn for justice

BY JONATHAN ROZEN AND EVELYN OKAKWU

Kamilu Ibrahim Tahidu and his brothers gather every evening outside their family home in Ghana’s capital of Accra. They sit in a circle of plastic chairs and enjoy each other’s company. They pray together. And they never forget that one of them is missing.

It’s been over four years since assassins came to their neighbourhood, waited for their sibling, investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, and then shot him in his car. “We heard the gunshot,” Tahidu recalled in a recent interview with CPJ. “Someone ran and said that they were killing our brother.”

Sitting steps from the crime scene, Tahidu expressed frustration with the failure of Ghanaian authorities to apprehend those responsible. Certain political elites have not been sufficiently scrutinized, he said, and his speaking out about the murder had brought new threats.

The lack of accountability in Divela’s case is indicative of a broader pattern of impunity for crimes against journalists in the West African country, often seen as one of the region’s most stable democracies with a high degree of media freedom. As with cases of other journalists attacked in recent years, Tahidu expressed dismay that officials had not been more supportive and communicative about their investigations.

Ghana’s presidential election is scheduled for December 2024 and opposition candidate John Mahama recently committed to “speed up” the investigation into Divela’s January 2019 killing. But words from authorities have offered the family little clarity or comfort. “They promised to get results very soon,” Tahidu said, recalling a conversation with Ghanaian Inspector General of Police George Akuffo Dampare following his appointment back in 2021. “Soon is yet to come.”

Divela decided to become a journalist out of dissatisfaction with inflation and the economic situation for average people in Ghana, his family told CPJ. He worked as a reporter with Tiger Eye Private Investigations, an investigative journalism group headed by Anas Aremeyaw Anas. The identities of Tiger Eye PI members are not publicly known, as they operate largely undercover to document alleged wrongdoing by those in positions of power.

The year before the murder, Anas and Divela received public threats from Kennedy Agyapong, a prominent member of Ghana’s ruling party now seeking to be Ghana’s president. The threats came ahead of the release of a Tiger Eye PI film exposing alleged corruption among African football officials, including then president of the Ghana Football Association Kwesi Nyantakyi. The documentary, “Number 12,” caused an uproar in Ghana’s soccer world when it aired in 2018, prompting Nyantakyi’s resignation and the world governing body FIFA to ban him for life from football-related activities.

In March, a Ghanaian judge dismissed Anas’ defamation suit brought in response to Agyapong’s comments. A similar defamation suit filed in the U.S. is ongoing.

According to a Forbidden Stories investigation into Divela’s killing, Agyapong said he had “nothing to do with this murder.” Police said they questioned Agyapong – described as being close to Nyantakyi – as part of their preliminary investigation, but Tahidu believes the politician has not been adequately investigated. “He thinks he [is] above the law,” Tahidu said. CPJ’s calls to Agyapong did not connect, nor did calls to his brother, Ralph Agyapong, who serves as his lawyer.

Tahidu told CPJ he reacted with furious disbelief when police showed him a cheap cell phone without internet capabilities as the device Nyantakyi handed over for the murder investigation. Tahidu did not believe something so low-tech could be the primary device of a once-powerful sports boss and said it suggested the authorities had not taken their job seriously. Local media reported that police seized phones and computers from Nyantakyi months before Divela’s murder as part of their fraud investigations related to the allegations from Tiger Eye PI’s film, but Tahidu said police did not mention these to Divela’s family.

CPJ reached Nyantakyi by phone, but when asked about the police investigation into him after the killing, he said, “OK, thank you” and then the line disconnected. Follow-up calls rang unanswered.

Anas, who only allows himself to be photographed with his face covered, told CPJ that police had summoned him twice to give statements. The first was immediately after the killing and the second was more recently after a new homicide unit opened to investigate cold cases. Anas said he explained his working relationship with Divela and told police he did not have any information about the murder.