Prof. Dua-Agyemang and Asiedu Nketia
Moves
by the General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC)
Asiedu Nketia, to get a suit brought against him by the Chairman of the Audit
Service Board thrown out of court has crumbled.
This
follows the dismissal of an application filed by his lawyers which sought to throw
out the suit filed against him by Prof. Dua-Agyemang.
The
NDC scribe who claims he has evidence and witnesses to support his allegations
against the former Auditor General was praying an Accra High Court to dismiss
the suit because it cannot rely on the English translations of the comments he
made in the local ‘Twi’ dialect.
But
the court presided over by Justice Sophia R. Bernasko-Essah, dismissed the application
and directed the plaintiff to amend his case to include the original comments
which were made in the Twi language.
Asiedu
Nketia therefore has 14 days within which to file his defence which then paves
the way for the substantive matter to be heard.
Former
Auditor General, Prof Dua-Agyeman, who is now the board chairman of the Audit
Service, dragged Asiedu Nketia to court
demanding GH₵15 million over comments he made on radio which intended to damage
his reputation.
The
NDC scribe popularly known as ‘General Mosquito’ has been accused of making
slanderous statements against Prof. Dua-Agyeman that he was fond of churning
out fake audit reports based on which he was sacked by the accountants
association.
But
in what could be described as a delay tactics, his lawyer, Johnson Normesinu,
filed a motion and prayed the court to strike out the plaintiff’s pleadings as
well as dismiss the suit on the grounds that the pleadings did not disclose any
reasonable cause of action.
It
is his argument that the court cannot rely on the English translations without
having access to the original comments made in Twi which the plaintiff finds to
be defamatory.
But
private legal practitioner, Gary Nimarko, lead counsel for Prof. Dua- Agyeman,
in a sharp rebuttal, opposed the application saying the court cannot dismiss
the case because it has not been served with the original comments made in Twi.
According
to him, Asiedu Nketia filed a counter claim to the suit in which he claimed
that he has evidence and witnesses to confirm his statements.
Statement of Claim
Prof.
Dua-Agyeman in his suit avers that without basis or probable cause, Asiedu
Nketia “ostensibly sought to impugn the integrity, dignity and reputation of
the Plaintiff and to ridicule him in the eyes of right thinking members of
society”.
The plaintiff avers that Asiedu Nketia on October 2, 2018 made some unsubstantiated and disparaging statements on an Accra based radio station, Neat FM accusing him of producing fake audit accounts in 1983 while he was at the Audit Service leading to his dismissal.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak
