The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa has stirred further the controversy generated by the New Punch Editor, Baba

Ansabah, who said he once concocted stories to demean the President.

Prof Kwame Karikari describes Baby Ansabah, known officially as Ato Sam, as a fraud and journalistic crook.

He told Joy FM’s Super Morning Show that “Anybody who knows this fellow in the media since the early 90s and the late 80s when people were striving to open up the space for free speech and independent and free media knew this guy as a fraud,” he said.

“If he says he concocted stories – I believe he must have done that – but in short I think Baby Ansaba…all he is trying to do is to find a good position in the new government so that he can eat; he is looking for crumbs.”

According to Prof Karikari, Mr Sam “is not somebody that anybody should take seriously that your radio station shouldn’t waste time…on somebody like that. He is not worth to be called a journalist.”

The professor’s statement comes after Baby Ansabah admitted to Joy FM on Monday that he was never included in ex-President Kufuor’s over-180 trips around the world during the ex-president’s tenure.

Mr Ansabah was recently picked among journalists who accompanied President Mills to Trinidad and Tobago for government business.

Prof Karikari expressed regret over the situation where some people parade as journalists when they “don’t deserve to be noticed even as a anything other than simple crooks who want to eat some crumbs.”

The office of the ex-president has reacted to Mr Sam’s self-confession, describing it as rather unfortunate.

“It just saddens me and I’m amazed that a journalist of his calibre will say the things that he is saying. His sole criteria for judging President Kufuor is that he did not take him on a trip.

“If that is what a journalist is worth, that I don’t take you on a trip and because of that you are not worthy to be called a good president, then of course he is not worthy to be called an editor,” aide to the ex-president, Mr Frank Agyekum said.

Mr Karikari said it remains the prerogative of the ruling National Democratic Congress to decide to add Baby Ansabah to the party’s propaganda team but he warns that the journalist has no image to defend.

As pressure mounts on the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to suspend Mr Sam, communications analyst Dr Niyi Alarbi said such a move does not bar the journalist from still practising the profession.

Mr Alarbi said the confession of Baba Ansaba firms the need for journalists to ensure more sanity.

Meanwhile, the GJA is meeting to take a decision on how to handle the implications of Baby Ansaba’s confession he published stories about Professor Mills in the lead up to Election 2008 that he knew were fabrications.