Established ‘Quack’ Tribunals And Committees That Had The Power To Try And Convict People 

Much like Nkrumah with the Preventive Detention Act (PDA) which gave him the power to imprison anyone he felt like without trial or due process, Rawlings established numerous quasi judicial bodies which derived their power from him and had the powers of the judiciary – meaning Rawlings could have imprisoned, or worse, anyone he, and by extension his ‘courts’ deemed ‘enemies of the revolution’.
The People’s Defense Committees (PDCs), Workers’ Defense Committees (WDCs), Citizen Vetting Committees (CVCs) and many other similar tribunals were set up by fiat of Chairman Rawlings, and many people lost their freedom, and sometimes their lives – due to the excesses of these bodies.
At the time, getting into the crosshairs of any of these bodies was virtually a death sentence. The Citizen Vetting Committee was charged with scrutinising the wealth of Ghanaians, and anyone with money in their accounts above a certain threshold was considered corrupt and got into massive trouble. Never mind that Rawlings and his cronies had the entire nation’s wealth at their disposal.