By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, February 12, 2015
The opposition New Patriotic
Party (NPP) says President John Mahama owes Ghanaians a duty to explain the
whereabouts of the 44 Ghanaians reportedly killed in the Gambia in 2005.
According to the NPP Minority
in Parliament, the President then a ranking member of Foreign Affairs Committee
of Parliament persistently pressurized the Kufuor administration to find the 44
missing persons but when he was given the mandate to rule, Mr. Mahama has
failed woefully to resolve that issue with the Gambia.
The NPP made the
request at a news conference in Accra onTuesday when discussing the NDC
government’s handling of Foreign Affairs.
Hansard Revelation
Quoting the then Bole
MP as captured in the Hansard of March 2, 2007 asking then Deputy Foreign
Minister Akwasi Osei-Adjei what the ‘value’ of a Ghanaian was and whether he
puts ‘warm’ diplomatic relations with the Gambia ‘higher’ than the lives of 44
of “our citizens murdered extra judicially.”
President Mahama at
the time even went further to tell Mr. Osei-Adjei to take the issue up to
ECOWAS and Africa Union levels or the African Human Rights Commission and said
he had a report on the matter prepared by Gambian officials which indicated how
the 44 were killed and their bodies dismembered and hastily interred.
Isaac Osei - ranking member of Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament
Interestingly, when
the supposed families of the 44 victims were to be compensated around 2010 or
so, only eight were sorted out by the NDC government and the NPP is wondering
where the rest were.
“Mr. President, you
said 44 were killed, was that the truth? You said you had the report, were you
truthful? Today, are you not just the President of Ghana but Head of ECOWAS,
what have you done after six years at the highest levels of Ghana’s government”,
the Minority asked especially in view of the President’s recent visit to Gambia
over the failed coup to topple Yahaya Jammeh, the Gambian strongman.
AFCON Attacks
The NPP also said
they never heard the President comment on the football fans that were attacked
at the African Cup of Nations (AFCON 2015), when Ghana played against hosts
Equatorial Guinea in the semi finals.
Ghana Embassy Casino
The Minority further demanded
answers to a bizarre news that Ghana’s Mission premises in Tokyo Japan was used
to operate an illegal casino.
The incident led to
the recalling of Ghana’s Ambassador to Japan Edmund K. A. Deh and in spite of
Foreign Minister Hannah Tetteh’s promise on March 20, 2014, to keep the public
informed about investigations into the matter,nothing was heard almost one year
on.
“The nation is still
waiting to be properly informed about the results of the investigations into
this matter which began in March 2014 and the actions taken by the government
to ensure that such a disgraceful thing does not recur.”
Regional Elections
The NPP urged President
Mahama and others as regional leaders to ‘reproach’ ECOWAS political leaders
who had the penchant to distort electoral processes of their respective
countries and admonished Nigerians living in Ghana not to mount billboards in
Ghana to advertize their preferred candidates in the crucial general elections
which has since been postponed March 28 to from February 14 due to insecurity,
since “they may infringe the bye-laws of the MDAs.”
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