Drama Over Minister’s Juju

Details

Category: Special Reports

Created on Tuesday, 06 September 2011 00:00

Hits: 2994

Drama Over Minister’s Juju

DAILY GUIDE’s political reporter, Halifax Ansah-Addo, became the latest target of a smear campaign yesterday, Monday,

September 5, when he went to the office of a deputy Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, Dr Hannah Louisa Bissiw, to follow up on a story in which she was alleged to have consulted a spiritualist to use ‘juju’ to achieve her dream of heading the ministry.

In less than 30 minutes after leaving Hannah Bissiw’s office, a number of broadcast journalists including Kojo Preko Dankwa of Asempa FM and Adom FM, as well as Fiifi Boafo of Oman FM called to ask why the reporter had taken a bribe of GH¢1,000 from Hannah Bissiw so as to kill a story.

According to Fiifi Boafo and Kojo Preko, they had received breaking news from Hannah Bissiw’s office that Halifax had just left the place, threatening to publish the said juju story if he was not given an amount of GH¢3,000 to “kill the story”.

The two broadcast journalists said they had the information from Hannah Bissiw’s office and the informant alleged that the deputy Minister’s secretary, a lady called Joyce, bargained the bribe money down to GH¢2,000, of which Halifax was given a first part payment of GH¢1,000. They said the entire discussion was secretly recorded and the arrangement was for Halifax to have gone for the remaining money the next day if the story did not appear in the paper.

Interestingly, Halifax really went to Hannah Bissiw’s office yesterday morning but did not meet her and spoke with the secretary.

The episode was similar to what happened to Ebo Bruce-Quansah, another DAILY GUIDE reporter, who was recently reported by the Ghana PALAVER newspaper, until recently edited by Ebo’s father, Jojo Bruce-Quansah, to have defrauded a pastor and a radio station at Bolgatanga in the Upper East region to the tune of GH¢1,500.

Both the pastor and the radio station have since issued statements to deny the Ghana Palaver publication and exonerated Ebo Bruce-Quansah.

Encounter At Hannah Bissiw’s Office

There were two female secretaries at Hannah Bissau’s reception. One of them gave her name as Joyce and explained that the deputy Minister was out of town but would return the next morning.

The journalist then requested to leave a written note for the minister after which he left.

About five or so minutes later, Joyce called Halifax on phone; she obviously had the phone number from the note he had left and asked him to return to the Minister’s office for a discussion on the story he was following.

When the journalist returned to Hannah Bissiw’s office, Joyce started begging him to drop the story because the deputy Minister was a staunch Christian who would not meddle in juju.

The journalist explained that dropping the story was beyond his reach because he had been sent by his editor.

He insisted that Joyce should give the note to the deputy Minister and assure her that her version would be carried so as to have a balanced story.

There was absolutely no talk about money between the journalist and Joyce and at no point was any call made to Hannah Bissiw while the journalist was in her office.

It was when Halifax left Hannah’s office that he had the phone calls from Fiifi and Kojo asking whether it was true he had gone for some money from the deputy Minister so as to drop a story.

Silent Denial By Hannah Bissiw’s Secretary

When Halifax got to his office, he was informed that someone had already called to make a similar allegation of bribery against him.

At that point, a phone call was placed to Hannah Bissiw’s office to find out from Joyce where the bribe allegation was coming from.

She denied being responsible for it and asked the journalist to relax and leave it for Jesus Christ to deal with.

Joyce blatantly denied that she was the one spreading the false report and promised to discuss the development with the deputy Minister the next day.

Though DAILY GUIDE had followed the ‘juju story’  for some time, it had been difficult to get the deputy Minister’s version as she neither picked her phone when the paper tried reaching her on countless occasions nor even bothered to reply text messages sent to her phone requesting to book an interview with her.

Source: Daily Guide/Ghana

No comments

Chief Imam okayed Akufo-Addo Lecture On Eid

Details

Category: Special Reports

Created on Sunday, 04 September 2011 00:00

Hits: 2651

Chief Imam okayed Akufo-Addo Lecture On Eid

The editor of the Daily Searchlight Newspaper, Kenneth Korankye has described as hypocritical, comments passed by some members of the NDC that the NPP flag bearer is anti Islam for delivering a public lecture on a Mulsim day of celebration.

The NPP flag bearer Nana Akufo Addo has come under heavy criticism for his address last Wednesday August 31 which happened to be a Public Holiday and a day marking the Islamic Eidul Fetir Celebration.

Mr. Ken Koranche who was re-acting to the issue after it had been raised by Deputy Energy Minister Inusah Fuseini on Citi Fm’s Current Affairs Program, “The Big Issue” stated that there was nothing wrong with the choice of the day because even the National Chief Imam was ably represented at the function.

He said “I am saying that I have heard people not only on this network (Citi FM) but on other networks taking issue with Nana Addo for delivering the speech on that particular day because it was a Muslim Holiday and I am further saying that the Chief Imam of this country sent a representative to come and pray at the occasion and he knows more about Islamic worship than most of us do.

“In fact I would presume that he knows more about Islamic worship than Inusah Fuseini and the people who have been commenting. I think that this issue ought to be addressed because it is hypocritical. “If he decides to present it on Thursday, the market day in my hometown is on Thursday.

On any day in this country you have people who cannot listen to radio for special reasons. If he decides to do on Sunday, all Christians go to church on Sunday.

“This reasoning is spurious and as I am saying I am prepared to listen to this thing from some people but not serious people in government”.

Meanwhile, the office of the Chief Imam confirmed to Citi FM that a representative was indeed sent to the said function.

Alhaji Awaisu, who attended the function on behalf of the Chief Imam, indicated that there was nothing un-Islamic about scheduling the event on that faithful day. Alhaji Awaisu Bio intimated that “I was instructed by the Chief Imam to go and represent him because he was invited.

"The program was to come on about two weeks ago at Alisa Hotel but was postponed to the 31st.“So I went there not on my own but as a representative of the National Chief Imam.

"Whether I am NPP or NDC that does not hold, I am not doing politics, I only represent the National Chief Imam and my office does not allow me because the National Chief Imam does not do politics.

"He is the father of all political parties and as the executive secretary of the national Chief Imam I do not come out to identify myself with any party.

“I cannot say whether there is anything wrong with the day of the speech because although it is a day we were celebrating the Eid, it was not only Moslems that were expected to go there”.



Source: citifmonline.com

No comments

Ayariga: I gave govt, party info to US officials

Details

Category: Special Reports

Created on Tuesday, 06 September 2011 00:00

Hits: 2697

Ayariga: I gave govt, party info to US officials

Deputy Minister of Education Mahama Ayariga has admitted disclosing information about President Atta Mills' government and the NDC to US diplomats.

Mr. Ayariga is quoted in the latest Wikileaks cables as admitting serious personality problems amongst members of President Mills’ communication team during his term as presidential spokesperson.

He’s said to have cited strained relations between himself, former Information Minister Zita Okaikoi and the Director of Communications at the presidency Koku Anyidoho.

The former presidential spokesperson admits making the statements but believes he did nothing wrong.

“I have had conversations with all manner of persons on our governance structures and the weaknesses inherent in our governance structures. I believe that among those that I have been speaking with on our governance structures will include staff of the American embassy,” he told Joy News.

“…and I believe it’s not just with them but also with all those who have an interest in our governance structures.”

Mr Ayariga believes it will be wrong to suggest that he erred when he was only expressing a genuine concern that was already public.

“Anybody who was in this country in the early days of our government would admit that there were issues in the workings of the members of the communication team of the government and this was public knowledge,” he said.

Mahama Ayariga would however not indicate whether the president has questioned him on the issues but Joy News sources indicated some senior members of the party are considering inviting him for a discussion.

He says he is not surprised at the revelation.

“I am intelligent enough to know that when I engage in conversations with development partners they use that as a basis for understanding your country…and which areas of need exist in your country that they should intervene in…so that when there is a need for them to be sympathetic to your government then they can do that instead of being hard on you in terms of pressing forward certain demands of you,” he said.

He said he also was talking about “challenges that government was confronted with, measures that we were putting in place to deal with those challenges and our determination to succeed as a government.”


Source:Fiifi Koomson, Joy FM

No comments

Akufo-Addo Pinches Sleepy Mills

Details

Category: Special Reports

Created on Saturday, 03 September 2011 00:00

Hits: 4116

Akufo-Addo Pinches Sleepy Mills

It was billed as Liberty Lectures, the first in a series espousing the ideals in freedom to use human intellect as catalyst for development, organised by the Danquah Institute, a media, research and policy analysis centre in Accra.

But with the political clout of the Principal Speaker, and the fact that former President John Agyekum Kufuor and other dignitaries were billed to speak, the lecture was always going to have a profound effect on the body politic.

It turned out to be an illuminating night, offering an insight into what this nation would look like under the presidency of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. As was the normal feature with such gatherings, there were a number of side attractions.

When Prof. Kwabena-Frimpong Boateng, the Honorary Director of the Cardio-thoracic Centre, dismissed by the fumbling administration of President John Evans Mills Atta Mills, entered the hall, he was given a standing ovation. Everybody wanted to shake the hand of the heart surgeon, who was sent packing by a terse dismissal letter “with immediate effect.”

There was retired Supreme Court Judge, Prof. A.K.P. Kludze who was detained as a student leader in 1964, under the Preventive Detention Act of 1958, promulgated by the Convention People’s Party government of the first indigenous Head of State of the Republic of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

When he took the mike, Prof. Kludze had the audience cheering with the pronouncement that in the political tradition from which the NPP emerged, truth was sacrosanct. “A cow is a cow,” he declared to loud cheers.

He invited the audience to ponder over the possibility of including August 4th as a date worthy of national celebration. It was on August 4, 1897, he told the audience, when the Aboriginal Rights Protection Society, the first political grouping to emerge in the then Gold Coast, was formed to fight the threat from colonial Britain to put lands in the country under the British imperial crown, and which could be said to have been the fore-runner for agitation for self-government.

When Nana Akufo-Addo was called to the podium, the applause was understanding. He was not only the lecturer. It was the first time party faithful were to get an insight into the policy that would shape up into the New Patriotic Party’s 2012 Manifesto.

He apologised for the decision to postpone the lecture, which was originally scheduled for August 4th, this year. The change of date was occasioned by his departure to South Africa to deliver a lecture on ‘Outlawing Criminal Libel Laws in Ghana.”

“My speech on that day, focused fittingly, on that momentous enterprise of liberty. 10 years ago, on 2nd August, 2001, when the then President of the Republic, His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor, gave his assent to the enactment of the Criminal Code (Repeal of Criminal Libel and Seditious Libel Laws (Amendment) Act, 2001 (Act 602). The repeal brought to an end, a century old legal regime repressive of free expression.” Incidentally, Nana Akufo-Addo was the Attorney-General who championed the abolition of those repressive laws.

Nana Addo traced the history of the NPP, which is founded on the libertarian values that informed the formation of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society at Cape Coast on August 4th, 1897. It was the brain-child of John Mensah Sarbah, the first qualified lawyer to come out of the then Gold Coast, Joseph Casley-Hayford, Peter Awoonor Renner, Jacob Wilson Sey, George Hughes and J.P. Brown among others.

“The society, with the help of the mosquito, spared the Ghanaian nation the seemingly intractable problems that continue to confront many nations of Eastern and Southern Africa, which experienced settler colonialism, and the expropriation of the lands of the indigenous people by the settlers, he told his audience.

According to the NPP leader, the United Gold Coast Convention, officially recognised as the first political party in the Gold Coast, was inaugurated at Saltpond 50 years later, on August 4th, 1947.

“Wealthy nationalist businessman, George Paa Grant, J.B. Danquah, R.S. Blay, Francis Awoonor-Williams, Edward Akufo-Addo, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, otherwise known as Liberty Lamptey, Ebenezer Ako Adjei, and others such as Cobbina Kessie, J.W. de Graft-Johnson, William Ofori-Atta and John Tsiboe, publisher of the Ashanti Pioneer, gathered in Saltpond, at a colourful ceremony attended by chiefs and people from all walks of life, to launch the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the nationalist organisation, which first lit the flame for the liberation of our country from colonial rule.”

It was the UGCC, according to Nana Akufo-Addo, that invited Dr. Nkrumah down to be its General Secretary. Nkrumah broke away from the UGCC and founded the Convention People’s Party, incidentally, also at Saltpond in 1949, to push for independence on March 6, 1957.

The man who could be President by the end of next year, said liberty was the cornerstone of these two major organisations from which the NPP emerged, urging Ghanaians to push the frontiers for liberty and free expression.

“Throughout the ages, people have fought for liberty. One of the founding fathers of the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin, said: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Nana Addo deplored the tendency of the Atta Mills administration to resort to borrowing, instead of exploiting the natural resources of state to move the nation forward.

“We may have to re-visit our HIPC experience, if we don’t borrow responsibly. For example, some $10 billion of loans has been approved by Parliament since President Mills took over. The danger with this development is three-fold: lack of adequate value for money assessment, debt sustainability issues, and insufficient preparedness on how these loans must be spent.”

The official leader of the opposition then tore into the Mills administration. “This NDC government has had plenty of resources at its disposal because of the expanded economy it inherited; record cocoa and gold prices on the world market, together with revenues from this new found wealth. To borrow a famous phrase: Na Sika No Wo Hene?”

He said a government run by Akufo-Addo would put premium on industrialisation to turn our natural resources into finished or semi-finished products, instead of shipping them as raw materials and receiving peanuts for them.

“We can’t continue travelling the worn path of limited success of being exporters of raw materials,” Nana Akufo-Addo charged. “Ghana should be at the fore-front of industrialisation of West Africa.”


Source: Ebo Quansah/The Chronicle

No comments