The Chronicle is disappointed that President John Evans Atta Mills has not found it compelling enough to make a full disclosure on the GH¢58 million dole-out to his friend and NDC bankroller, Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
By this piece, The Chronicle is serving notice that we would not rest until the truth has been established in this sordid affair. We do not accept the notion that the President does not know the contents of a letter written to him through the Chief of Staff or Office of the President.
On Thursday, when the dismissal of the Mr. Martin Amidu, the distinguished Attorney-General was announced, it was communicated to the media and the Ghanaian populace through the Chief of Staff, John Martey Newmann.
The Chief of Staff is key to the operations of the Presidential office. We submit that it is impossible that a very serious matter like the advise to pay GH¢58m from the consolidated fund for the use of one person, could be brought to the attention of the President by the Chief of Staff.
We are drawing the attention of the President to the seriousness of the problem that his administration has created. We are told that Woyome is a friend of the President and that he is a regular visitor to the Castle.
This should inform the President that the likely fall-out of the scandal would engulf his office, unless he summons the courage to deal with it once and for all. If the President still believes that he could use the Economic and Organised Crime Office to shift the blame from his fumbling administration onto others, he must be living in a cloud cuckoo land.
The Woyome pay-out is the most terrible scandal to hit any administration of this country since independence, in 1957. It puts Krobo Edusie’s importation of a 3,000 pounds sterling gold bed in 1958 in the shade, and makes the $1 million loan contracted by the People’s National Party to settle officers of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, leading to jail terms handed to Nana Okutwer Bekoe, National Chairman of the PNP and other party bigwigs, in the so-called revolutionary era, a joke.
The Woyome pay-out is a scandal of gargantuan proportion and should not be swept under the carpet. If the President is unaware, the dismissal of Mr. Martin Amidu would never wash the dirt off the hands of those who perpetrated the act. Neither would it absorb the President who got to know of it and failed to stop the deal.
The manner of the dismissal of Mr. Martin Amidu, the man who partnered Prof. John Evans Atta Mills in his failed attempt to be President of Ghana, tells its own story. For us at The Chronicle, we would never be fooled by the grand scheme to cover up.
The Chronicle would like to know why Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu is at post, while being investigated by the EOCO. Why has the President not fired his Chief of Staff, if it is true that Mr. Martey-Newmann failed to inform the President when the advice for the payment of that huge money was communicated for the attention of the President, through the Chief of Staff.
If Prof. Mills thinks Ghanaians are being taken in by the comedy his administration is trying rather hard to surround the scandal with, he would live to regret. Ghanaians still remember the fuss members of the then opposition made when a farmer was said to have paid ¢41 (GH¢4,100) towards the construction of a security gate at the residence of former President John Agyekum Kufuor .
The Woyome scandal cannot be wished away. Neither would the attempt to visit his sins on our innocent souls ever succeeded. We submit here that President John Evans Atta Mills knows a lot about this payment and is obliged to come clean!
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