Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr.
The Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Malik Kweku Baako has launched scathing attacks on the integrity of the Ghana Police Service, pooh-poohing their arrest of former deputy Minister of Sports, Osei Bonsu Amoah, popularly known as OB Amoah.
Mr OB Amoah was arrested and charged with corruption and causing financial loss to the state for his role in processes leading to the Woyome judgement debt scandal. He was said to have received in two trenches GH¢75,000 from businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome in 2011 after he (Woyome) had received a total of GH¢51 million in judgement debt.
Privy to the police drafted charge sheet, Kweku Baako said on Joy FM’s flagship programme Newsfile Saturday that charges preferred against Mr Amoah are “laughable” and was confident the police are on “wild goose chase”.
The motto of the Ghana Police Service, “Service with Integrity”, he implied, has conspicuously been compromised by allowing the institution to be used by the government of the day for political reasons. He said emphatically that OB Amoah’s arrest was to “provide propaganda capital” for the ruling party to equate the arrest of Alfred Woyome: a member of the NDC.
According to Mr Baako, the police are “bound to fail because they are not proceeding on the correct premise”, pointing out factual misrepresentation in the police charge sheet which said Mr Amoah received the GH¢75,000 in 2006 instead of 2011 as publicly known.
Mincing no words, he said the approach adopted by the police in unravelling the Woyome scandal is “pathetic…shoddy…deficient…and it is of dubious validity”.
Obviously livid Kweku Baako accused the police of doing a “poor job” since he saw no connection between OB Amoah and Waterville – the company whose contract abrogation culminated into the judgement debt – as well as his connection with Woyome, and for the police to link Mr Amoah to the saga does “not make sense”.
He therefore advised the Ghana Police Service “not to waste our state resources to prosecute a useless case”.
But in a quick response, deputy Information Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa counseled Mr Baako to tread cautiously since there might be some information available to the police that he might not be aware of.
“You cannot sit here and accuse the police of dubious validity and all of that. And actually bastardised the service and bastardised the investigators…you’ve made yourself an investigative expert and at the same time an interrogative guru, and then a Chief Justice and pronounce that ‘the case will go nowhere, it has no basis’…. There is fundamental error in that kind of submission.”
Mr Ablakwa therefore asked the public to give the police the benefit of the doubt to execute their job.
He was however hopeful that in the face of claims that the presidency intends covering up the Woyome scandal, the president’s integrity would be “exonerated…and would stand tall as a person who does not condone corruption.”
Nana Akomea, NPP Member of Parliament for Okaikoi South, said former Attorney General Betty Mould Iddrisu is a principal factor in the Woyome scandal, and should have therefore been invited first, albeit, he said the opposition is “happy” that the police finally questioned her .
Kojo Adu Asare, NDC Member of Parliament for Adentan, reposed confidence in the credibility of the police service, insisting the police should be allowed to test the law with their charge sheet.
Source: Myjoyonline