Anyidoho Fired!

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Created on Thursday, 07 June 2012 00:00

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Anyidoho Fired!

Samuel George Nettey, a member of the government’s communications team, has descended heavily on the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Koku Anyidoho, describing him as ‘hot-blooded’ and behaving like a ‘tin-god’.

He also accused Anyidoho of sending threatening text messages to persons in government and ‘praying that they don’t fall into ditches’.

“Koku Anyidoho expects government’s communication machinery to support him at the expense of the President? We don’t need hot-blooded people who just act on the spur of the moment without thinking and think they are tin-gods who must be worshipped and that the President should be sacrificed for their personal interest; clearly not,” Sam George fired the President’s Director of Communications on Radio Gold yesterday.

Speaking on Radio Gold’s morning show where he described the President’s spokesman as a liability to the government and the Presidency, Sam virtually dragged the Castle strongman on the floor, asking him to go back and learn what it takes to be a communications director for the President.

Sam seemed to have been provoked by a publication in yesterday’s edition of the ‘The Informer’ newspaper owned by Koku, under the headline, ‘Sack this Aliu Mahama Boy Now’, which sought to present him as an NPP mole who had wriggled his way into the National Democratic Congress (NDC) fraternity.

He said, “We heard the rather unfortunate statements that were made by the Director of Communications which after checks turned out to be false; he had put the President in the line of fire. The President was being called a ‘knee-jerk reaction President’, a ‘President who takes decisions in the heat of the moment without thinking’, all thanks to his Communications Director.”

He called on the President and the entire government communication machinery to “reassess Koku Anyidoho’s position in government communications”, since in his opinion, “he has become a liability and not an asset”.

Apart from that, Sam George, who used to run errands for former Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama under the Kufuor administration, noted, “He just goes out and makes statements and makes the President look bad and when we sit on air and do damage control to protect our President, he decides to go around this and carry out this kind of cowardice oriented statements to try and smear you.”

Threats & Text Messages

“Well for me, the point is we must grow up, grow up and stop these attacks. He sent text to government officials attacking them simply because they had all chosen to speak for the President. I am not the only one he has sent text messages to; he has sent text messages to other government functionaries, threatening people and praying that they don’t fall into ditches. What does he mean by that?” Sam George asked rhetorically.

In spite of the fact that Koku Anyidoho had said on various platforms that it was some senior government official who instructed him to cause that infamous announcement of the supposed dismissal of the Ashanti ECG boss, Sam stated, “I have seen text messages from the said senior government official asking him to clarify his position again that he never gave him that instruction.”

That notwithstanding, he indicated, “Koku Anyidoho who sits today as the Director of Communications, I am reliably informed, was a member of the NPP too and Mrs. Rawlings, in one of her attacks on him, had asked him to return the NPP card, and that he had an NPP membership card.”

He further challenged the President’s spokesman to come out and tell how many party cards he holds.

Koku was said to be an NPP member when he was at the University of Ghana, Legon, in the 90s.

Notorious Okyeame

Sam George accused Mills’ communications director, who is always by the side of the President, as the author of the infamous ‘Okyeame on the beat’ column in The Informer newspaper, which has one Andy Kankam as its Editor-In-Chief, since according to him, the supposed Okyeame which he claimed to be Koku “clearly doesn’t have a mind of his own”.

Sam’s woes with Koku and the paper began when he appeared on Radio Gold’s ‘Alhaji and Alhaji’ programme last Saturday and spoke on the issue about Koku’s gaffe regarding the supposed dismissal of the Ashanti regional boss of the Electricity Company of Ghana.

Though he claimed to have spoken the truth during the programme, Sam said, “and the next thing I get is a text message from Koku Anyidoho blasting me and calling me a school boy and asking me if I think I love the President better than him, and you can see that very line from his text message in the article and so why won’t I place this solely on his feet?”

Disgrace

“And if that is his problem with me, he can choose to go to whatever length he wants to paint me black in the media. All I would do is I would ask that everybody or the media should please play every interaction I have had with the media over the past two years that I have been a member of the government’s communication team and see anywhere and point out to me one place where I have called in to question the integrity of his Excellency the President and do same for Koku Anyidoho and see the litany of disgrace he has brought to the Castle and the presidency because of his ill thought and not thought-through statements he makes,” Sam charged.

For this reason, he said, “The caveat Koku Anyidoho is issuing through ‘The Informer’ to safeguard his job…. he should bear in mind, some of us are not interested in his job; we are not interested in it at all. We are interested in protecting our President and ensuring that six months, exactly six months and a day from today, we would be going to the ballots to ensure that such goofs of Koku Anyidoho do not affect the candidature of His Excellency and if Koku Anyidoho thinks that it is he who would send the President across the bridge, well, then he is living in a paradise of his own world.”

Anyidoho Must Go

Since Koku unilaterally arrogated to himself the power to sack public officials through radio announcements using the President’s name, a lot of people have called for his head for bringing embarrassment to the presidency by usurping the functions of the President.

On Joy FM News File on Saturday, panelists and listeners who sent text messages called for his immediate dismissal for bringing the office of the president into disrepute.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

Source: Daily Guide/Ghana