(L-R) A photo collage of Samuel Atta Akyea, Kwabena Adu-Boahene and Dr Benjamin Otchere-Ankrah
Governance analyst and lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, Dr Benjamin Otchere-Ankrah, has urged the state to continue the prosecution of former Director-General of the National Signals Bureau (NSB), Kwabena Adu-Boahene, despite the threats by his lawyer that doing so might lead to the leaking of national security secrets.
Speaking in an interview with GhanaWeb on May 22, 2025, Dr Otchere-Ankrah asserted that the threat of leakage of national security secrets by Adu-Boahene’s lawyer, Samuel Atta Akyea, does not make sense.
The governance expert pointed out that the threat to leak national security secrets should not be an excuse not to hold public officers who misuse the resources of the state accountable.
He went on to call the bluff of the lawyer, saying that they should leak all the secrets they have, but Adu-Boahene must be prosecuted and all of his assets, together with those of his accomplices, confiscated.
“He should be prosecuted irrespective of the information he leaked. If he has gone to misuse state money, he should be prosecuted, and nobody should think of stopping it(sic). Even American information is leaked. Did you not hear recently that one of the national security heads mistakenly added a journalist to their page, and information was leaked? Has America collapsed? Certainly not.
“He can leak whatever information, but he should be prosecuted… He should be prosecuted, and we should not just be in a hurry to put him in jail. They should seize all his assets and those of all the people who were involved,” he said.
“It is so demeaning and heartbreaking that we don’t have money to fix our roads leading to flooding, to keep our lights on, and people are misusing state funds in this manner, and for him to come threaten that if you prosecute me, I will leak information. They should prosecute him,” he added.
The lecturer went on to criticise the leakage of the letter Adu-Boahene wrote to the National Security.
He wondered why the state would allow an accused person in such an important case to be writing letters and having access to the media.
“You know this cannot happen in an Arabic country, where you are in a cell and still have access to the media and be saying all kinds of nonsense,” he said.
“If he wrote to the national security, how was it leaked? Even that alone should be a subject of an investigation. Did he leak it himself, or was it the office (the national security) that leaked it?” he asked.
Background:
The Attorney General, Dr Dominic Ayine, has filed 11 charges against Kwabena Adu-Boahene, who has been accused of transferring GH¢49 million (approximately $7 million) from the bureau’s account to his personal account, among other offences.
A letter from Atta Akyea to the National Security Coordinator, in which Atta Akyea warned that prosecuting Adu-Boahene could have national security implications.
He also claimed the charges violated provisions of Ghana’s laws, including Act 1030 and Act 1040.
“Our client has instructed us that a cursory look at the case from the documents you inherited underscores the fact that the pith of the Hon. Attorney-General’s case are matters bothering on national security.
Besides, the intended prosecution violates the Security and Intelligence Agencies Act, 2020 (Act 1030) and the National Signals Bureau Act, 2020 (Act 1040),” part of Atta Akyea’s letter read.
In a separate letter to the National Security Coordinator, Adu-Boahene denied stealing from the state.
He submitted a list of individuals and organisations he claimed to have paid the contested funds to, – among them were MPs who asserted that these payments were for national security purposes.
BAI/VPO
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