The former Special Prosecutor has said the president’s claimed
vision to fight corruption will be fully exposed as hollow by the end of his
second term.
He has predicted President Nana
Akufo-Addo claimed the fight against corruption would crumble in his second
term.
Mr Martin Amidu in his latest epistle nine days after he exited office accused the President of ordering an audit into his tenure, describing it as vindictive.
“Mr President, the politically
induced witch-hunting audit you ordered into the Office of the Special
Prosecutor on Monday 23rd November 2020 after you had accepted my resignation
from the date I assumed Office in 2018, to the date of your acceptance of my
resignation, simply because of my professional work on the suspected corruption
infested Agyapa Royalties Limited Transaction anti-corruption assessment report
will never intimidate me.
“You may end up rendering at naught the effectiveness of the Office in the performance of its statutory functions and undermine your own acclaimed vision of fighting corruption during your second term in office. Mark my words, Mr President!” He said in the 27-page document.
The anti-corruption campaigner resigned from office on November 16, 2020, citing presidential inference in his work.
According to him, President Akufo-Addo was under the illusion that he would be a docile holder of the anti-graft office.
According to him, the President’s reactions when he submitted his report on the Agyapa Royalties deal corruption and anti-corruption risk assessment conveyed the president’s impression.
He said far from being the independent office holder he was promised, his hands were tied four weeks ago, as there was an attempt to tie his hands when he submitted his report on the deal in which the government wanted to offload its 49% interest in a special purpose vehicle known as Agyapa Mineral Royalties Limited to raise $1 billion from the Ghana and London Stock markets.
But in a nine-page response to Mr. Amidu’s garland of accusations on November 17, the President insisted that at no point was Mr. Amidu’s hands tied not to play his role to tame corruption in public office in Ghana.
In a statement issued by the Secretary to the President, Nana Asante Bediatuo, the 40-point document said “at no point did the President ask you to shelve the report so he could “handle the matter”.
However, Mr. Amidu who had earlier claimed that his life was under threat has unloaded a full response to the President’s letter.
Mr. Amidu, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Justice in the Mills administration later became a poster boy for the fight against corruption.
His claim to fame will later come under his moniker, ‘Citizen vigilante’ as he single-handedly took on Woyome and Waterville who dubiously collected GHc 51 million in a judgment debt.
In the 72-point rejoinder to the President’s letter, he said the president had closed his eyes to other cases of corruption he had raised in the past.
Failure to sack or suspend Bawku MCE
Equating the President to the
biblical Moses in the fight against corruption, he urged the President to tell
Ghanaians his reason for refusing to interdict “or order the Municipal Chief
Executive for the Bawku Municipal Assembly to vacate her office.”
He said the president rejected
his suggestions that the MCE should even go voluntary or compulsory leave “like
you unconstitutionally did to Mr. Daniel Domelevo, the constitutionally
appointed Auditor-General of Ghana, after my several pleas with you.”
While failing to give details of
the corruption case against Hajia Hawa Ninchema, who is currently on trial at
the High Court, he said his pleas to the President was unheeded to in spite of
the fact that the first prosecution witness in the case gave his
evidence-in-chief, and was cross-examined and discharged on 12th November 2020.
Mr Amidu noted that “After
informal communications with you to do so failed, I wrote formally to you on 9th September 2020 attaching the interdiction
letters of her co-accused public officers who had been interdicted in the same
case and stating, inter alia, that: “Your decision is important to vindicate
your known commitment to fighting corruption and the promise we exchanged in
January 2018 before I accepted to be the Special Prosecutor.”
“She is still working at her
post when her co-accused who are also citizens of Ghana are on interdiction,”
he added.
Mr Amidu, who came under a
barrage of criticism for failing to live up to expectation after the
President’s letter in response to his resignation chronicles some of his
inactions, said the example of the Bawku MCE was an example to “remind you, Mr.
President, that you should not have unleashed your attack dogs on my integrity
as being responsible for the failure of the Special Prosecutor in the fight
against corruption under your Presidency.”
“How could I succeed when this
single example shows that my former “Anti-Corruption Moses” failed me anytime
his ox was gored like in the Agyapa Royalties Transactions anti-corruption
assessment report.
“It would come as no surprise to
me when all the accused persons in the two pending corruption cases in the High
Court since March 2019 I left behind are acquitted and discharged after my
resignation. Bawku is where I grew up and the people of Bawku know the
President’s corrupt partisan injustice that she is at post even today while the
other public officers are on interdiction,” he explained.
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