Opinion: Rest well, Jerry Ahmed Shaib

What an insult—both to our intelligence and to the fragile thing we call democracy.

After being off social media for weeks, buried under mountains of work and life’s relentless demands, I returned to find this circus. And what a welcome back it was.

Mohammed Zakou, a loud and loyal NPP activist, posted a photo of Ghana’s first female Vice President, Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, with the caption: “REST WELL YOUR EXCELLENCY”, accompanied by a medley of crying and praying emojis.

In the language of Ghanaian social media, this is not vague. It is not up for interpretation. “Rest well” is digital obituary code. It is how we announce death. And Zakou’s intent, whether juvenile or malicious, was obvious to anyone fluent in Ghana’s online ecosystem.

Enter Jerry Ahmed Shaib, NPP MP and chief apologist of the moment. With an audacity that deserves its own museum exhibit, he claimed Zakou merely meant the Vice President should “take a rest” due to fatigue. A wellness message. A kind reminder, perhaps, to hydrate and stretch.

Sir, do you truly think the rest of us are that daft?

Zakou’s post wasn’t a slip of tongue. It wasn’t misphrased empathy. It was a thinly veiled death wish aimed at a sitting Vice President who also happens to be a woman, an academic, and a historic political figure. And instead of condemning it plainly, Jerry tried to spin it into a bedtime suggestion.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

And it gets worse. Because in the fog of this PR blunder, we can’t even get clarity on what happened to Zakou. Was he arrested? Invited? Cautioned? No one seems to know, and the silence from officialdom is both predictable and pathetic. The fact that it’s so difficult to pin down basic facts shows how broken our information ecosystem has become. News reports conflict. Sources hedge. And citizens are left piecing together reality like forensic analysts on a budget.

Still, whether arrested or invited, the NPP’s outrage was swift and sanctimonious. Statements flew. Hashtags trended. Party spokespersons discovered their inner human rights defenders overnight. Suddenly, freedom of speech was sacrosanct. Suddenly, democratic space was shrinking. Suddenly, the NPP remembered civil liberties.

But let’s not forget the recent past, when they were in power, and these same rights were treated like party privileges. Some people made posts barely half as reckless, they were arrested, interrogated, and a host of other stuff. Zakou would have been thrown under the bus without hesitation if he were on the other side of the aisle.

That’s the real scandal. Not the post. Not even the arrest. But the breathtaking hypocrisy of it all.

What the NPP wants now is selective justice. They want free speech for their boys and state muscle for their enemies. They want to hide behind democratic ideals only when it suits them. They want to spin political violence into “friendly advice,” and they think we won’t notice.

But we do.

Jerry Ahmed Shaib’s defence isn’t just flimsy, it’s shameful. It insults the intelligence of the Ghanaian public, degrades the office of the Vice President, and reveals just how unserious the political class can be when cornered. It is not a defence. It is damage control gone wrong. It does nothing for Zakou. It does nothing for the NPP. And it certainly does nothing for Ghana’s democratic maturity.

Having been away from the political noise, perhaps I see this more clearly now. Distance has a way of sharpening the lens through which we see. And what I see is a country where power still trumps principle, and where politicians still believe the citizenry is one good soundbite away from forgetting.

So to Jerry Ahmed Shaib, I say this, with all the biting sarcasm your party has taught us to perfect:

Rest well.

Not because of fatigue, but because the nation is tired. Tired of the gaslighting. Tired of the spin. Tired of politicians who treat truth as a prop and conscience as a performance. Tired of selective rage and convenient amnesia.

Rest well, Jerry. You’ve earned it.

And as for me, maybe it’s best I go back to my social media hiatus. At least there, the fiction I consume comes with a disclaimer.

The post Opinion: Rest well, Jerry Ahmed Shaib first appeared on 3News.

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