For more than ten years, Ghana's political debate has been systematically corrupted by a pseudo-intellectual group that uses the flag of "civil society " to carry out deeply partisan plans;

at the forefront of this deliberate deception is Kofi Bentil, Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa.

The fact that Bentil has been acting under the false pretence of being an impartial and neutral referee in our democratic experiment shows that he has been engaged in a continuous and malicious campaign to bring the National Democratic Congress (NDC) into disrepute, at the same time serving as the main public relations remedy for the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The evidence of Bentil's bias is not merely partisan opinion; it is a clearly recorded series of acts of intellectual dishonesty and hostile rhetoric directed against the NDC's progressive tradition.

Genuine intellectualism requires consistency, empirical rigour, and a firm dedication to the truth; Bentil shows no regard for any of these qualities. His comments on important national events reveal a deep-seated ideological ill will disguised as academic language. The following account contains some of his comments.

1. On 24 September 2026

Kofi Bentil posted a message on Good Evening Ghana in which he spoke about the abduction and killing of three judges by the AFRC, stating that the judges did not resist when they were invited and thus were murdered.

Why the Claim is Partisan and Inappropriate

Kofi Bentil, who has often supported the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its presidential candidate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, tends to cite the most dreadful and frightening periods in Ghana's history whenever he wants to promote the NPP's interests. At the same time, he rarely compares instances when the state's security or law enforcement agencies used heavy-handed methods against members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or civic activists to Ghana's darkest history.

This also undermines state investigations. When it assigns a serious atrocity to the standard (even if the procedure is flawed or the execution is poor) of the inquiry carried out by EOCO into a law firm's financial dealings, the comment achieves a partisan aim, namely to protect political allies from legal investigation by portraying the state agency as a murderous regime.

In my opinion, this represents a gross historical false equivalence; the killing in June 1982 of three High Court judges (Justices Kwadwo Adjei Agyepong, Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, and Poku Sarkodie) and a retired army officer was a terrifying extrajudicial execution which left Ghana’s legal system permanently traumatised. To compare such a brutal abduction and murder with a current dispute between bureaucrats over an EOCO invitation led by a lone female officer and parliamentary immunity is to diminish a serious historical national tragedy.

This is also an example of exaggerated and dangerous rhetoric: although the public and the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) strongly criticised the EOCO operatives' aggressive behaviour (unfairly, in my view) at the court premises, there was no threat to life or any plan for a lawless execution. To refer to the executions carried out during the AFRC era in connection with a routine dispute over a Section 19 investigative notice causes public panic, misinforms the public, and over-politicises what at its heart is a matter of the correct constitutional arrest procedure.

2. The Laboma Beach Demolition

On 19 September 2026, while commenting on JoyNews’ Newsfile about the state-organised demolition of buildings near Laboma Beach, Bentil abandoned any reasonable socio-legal analysis of property rights and went through a serious intellectual breakdown. He boldly stated: "The NDC's political tradition is one that, in our history, has been known for destroying people's businesses".

This was no accidental mistake; it was a deliberate attempt at historical illiteracy. By reducing a complicated revolutionary history to a broad, damaging one-liner, Bentil makes it clear he is not a policy analyst but a partisan hatchet man pretending to be an academic.

3. The Judicial Double Standard (September 2025)

When the Mahama-led government carried out a legitimate constitutional procedure concerning the judiciary, Kofi Bentil discarded all legal reasoning and claimed that the NDC had launched a premeditated "witch-hunt" against the then Chief Justice. But when the NPP administration actively filled the courts with verified partisans, academic outrage disappears and is replaced by a cowardly silence. Kofi Bentil also had no objection to the removal of Charlotte Osei, the former chair of the Electoral Commission, or, even if he did object, he showed no righteous indignation.

4. The Electoral Gaslighting (December 2020)

After the highly contested 2020 presidential elections, Bentil came forward to discredit the opposition's legitimate concerns by casually referring to our data-supported petition as a "narrative charade". He warned the NDC not to try to influence public opinion without concrete evidence, saying: "Don't make it seem as though the election had been totally stolen"

deliberately minimising the legitimate structural irregularities the opposition pointed out.

5. The Suppression of Democratic Dissent (February 2020)

At the time when the NDC minority properly carried out a parliamentary walkout to object to the gradual authoritarian move towards introducing a new voters' register, Bentil came forward to control our language by rejecting words such as "tyranny" and "despotism"; in effect, he was saying that since the citizens had elected the president, the ruling majority has a "legitimate prerogative" to misuse its power. That is the kind of language used by an apologist for a despot, not one who defends civil liberties.

6. Sabotage of the 24-hour economy

In July 2025, Bentil's campaign against the NDC reached a new level of intellectual dishonesty when he launched a continuous public attack on H.E. John Dramani Mahama's key, transformative 24-Hour Economy policy. Instead of fairly evaluating a scheme intended to tackle severe youth unemployment and increase manufacturing productivity, Bentil chose to act as an economic pessimist. On social media and on Newsfile, he dismissively stated: "I wish it could work, but I know it won't!"

He condescendingly used poetry to protect the establishment, saying: "Campaign is poetry, governance is prose, which means that you can sweeten things up and imagine wonderful outcomes when campaigning, but in government you have to face reality!"

Bentil tried to conceal his obvious political sabotage with poorly constructed arguments:

The Bureaucracy Smokescreen

He vigorously opposed the proposed implementation framework, arguing that setting up a "24-Hour Economy Authority" would result in an unnecessary parallel system which would swell the bureaucracy. However, such an authority is needed to organise the policy's components, for example, by coordinating power supply, security, and policy leadership.

The Infrastructure Distortion

He firmly stated that the policy is an "expensive fantasy" unless billions are spent first to address Accra-Tema's water and energy shortages fully. However, he failed to account for the fact that a 24-hour economy is exactly the kind of structural change needed to generate the state revenues required to pay for that infrastructure. The idea that a policy titan like Kofi opposes a genuine attempt to move Ghana’s economy pass the 8 hour mark beggars belief. Yet he is happy to consult with businesses from countries whose economies are built on the 24 Hour model.

The Rebranding Lie

Although he said the policy was merely a "rebranding of existing initiatives", on 14 January 2026 he contradicted himself publicly by posting on Facebook, then demanding that Mahama make road contractors work on a three-shift system to work continuously! That is our 1,3,3 system, sir. For Bentil, the 24-hour economy is a good and necessary thing when he pushes for it, but a failure when the NDC puts forward the idea. The 1,3,3 is the icing on the cake of the policy, it is a natural consequence of scaled up productivity, brought about by low borrowing rates, good roads, reliable cheap electricity, tax rebates and security.

Fact-Checking the Falsifier

Bentil's academic deceit is nowhere more obvious than in his blatant economic revisionism. In a frantic attempt to support the current opposition, Bentil appeared on TV3’s Key Points in March 2026 and propagated a spectacular falsehood by claiming that the previous NDC government had drained half of Ghana's gold reserves in just two years. Let the firm, empirical figures reveal this lie:

The Gold Reserve Deception

When the NDC left office in December 2016, Ghana's gross international reserves were strong at $6.2 billion, offering 3.5 months' import cover. Bentil, however, failed to acknowledge that the Bank of Ghana's gold holdings had never been 'depleted' by the NDC. On the other hand, by May 2026, under the NPP administration—the one that he supports—the Bank of Ghana came under heavy review for selling 18 tonnes of the country's gold reserves in an attempt to hide massive central bank losses, thereby exposing the nation to a possible buyback loss of over $1 billion.

The Fallacy of Currency Performance

Although Bentil constantly describes the economy during Mahama's rule as a failure, the Cedi actually experienced steady and controlled depreciation throughout that period. Under the Economic Management Team he currently praises, however, the Cedi collapsed catastrophically, falling from 4.2 Cedis to $17 in 2022 and reaching a dreadful all-time low, which drove headline inflation to historic highs of over 54% in recent years.

Regarding Debt Sustainability

The Mahama government inherited a public debt total of ¢122 billion (equivalent to 56% of GDP), which was then used to build concrete, long-term infrastructure such as the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge), the University of Ghana Medical Centre, and the Kotoka International Airport Terminal 3. The present opposition, however, having taken advantage of Bentil’s think-tank manoeuvres, has inflated that debt to an unmanageable figure of over ¢700 billion (surpassing 90% of GDP), thereby forcing Ghana into a humiliating sovereign default and a difficult IMF debt restructuring programme. The enormous debt has now been considerably reduced due to the strong cedi.

The Bawumia Sycophancy: The Final Mask-Off

Any doubt about Bentil's objectivity has now been destroyed by his open support for Dr Mahamudu Bawumia. Starting with his early appeals on Facebook on 3 February 2024, in which he asked Ghanaians to give Bawumia a "fair hearing", up to his enthusiastic statements on 20 June 2025 that "none of the plans put forward by other political figures come close" to Bawumia's vision, Bentil has actively promoted the former head of the Economic Management Team. He has been advocating for the very person who was responsible for driving Ghana into an unprecedented economic crisis. Showing off incredible intellectual flexibility, Bentil called on Ghanaians to give Bawumia a "break", claiming that the Vice President was no more than an "advisor" and had no real power. Yet, as a man who co-leads a policy think tank, to say this is a disgraceful failure to understand basic political science.

To justify the Chairman of the Economic Management Team against the prospect of economic disaster while also historically condemning the NDC for global economic shocks is the greatest example of intellectual dishonesty. Bentil's loyalty to Bawumia suggests his earlier involvement in movements such as OccupyGhana was never about patriotism or good governance; it was a partisan move intended to undermine an existing NDC government and bring in the very economic managers he now desperately wants to protect.

On JoyNews' Newsfile, he desperately asserted:

"I am not neutral, I have never been... but I am independent".

That is a ridiculous contradiction, since you can't claim independence while acting as the chief campaign strategist for the opposition party's candidate.

A Call to Civic Accountability

The NDC's ordinary members are often alleged to act on raw emotion, but the evidence is clear:

the so-called "neutrals," such as Kofi Bentil, are motivated by a strong and irrational hatred of the NDC. We must firmly dismiss the moral standing of think-tank executives who also act as campaign strategists for the NPP's candidates. Kofi Bentil has discarded the appearance of neutrality; now he stands before the Ghanaian public completely bare: a partisan operator, an advocate of the establishment, and a political hypocrite.

The intellectual community should not regard his comments as genuine policy analysis, but rather as the compromised propaganda of an NPP communications officer who is not credited. The mask has been removed, and history will recall the part he played in Ghana's democratic and economic decline.