There are strong indications that Alfred Ogbamey, former editor of the defunct Gye Nyame Concord newspaper, will be hauled before an Accra high court for failing to carry out the terms of a two-year-old consent judgement over a defamation suit brought against him.
Ben Owusu Mensah, renowned International Ports and Harbours Consultant and Chief Executive of the Ghana Ports and Habours Authority (GPHA), represented by lawyer Atta Akyea, dragged the paper as well as its editor to court over an allegation of contract inflation by $2 million.
According to the plaintiff, the paper defamed him between November 29 and December 6, 2006 by publishing a thus: “We arranged to pay it up with $2 million to be shared among us. Now they have cheated me and I will talk, claimed a whistle blower.”
Incensed by the publication, the GPHA boss went to court to clear his name.
However, when the trial got hotter, Mr Ogbamey, represented by Egbert Faibille, run for cover, resulting in the signing of a consent judgement initiated and agreed by him.
Two years on, Ogbamey, who is now currently the head of Public Relations at Ghana Gas Company, is yet to comply with the terms of the judgement the court, presided over by Justice Kwabena Asuman-Adu, had adopted as its judgment in the case.
The judge in a ruling said, “This suit having come on for hearing and the parties having agreed to settle the matter out of court and the parties subsequently filing the terms of settlement on 24/01/2014 and praying the court that the said settlement be entered by this court as consent judgement, it is hereby ordered that the said settlement be adopted by this court as consent judgement.”
Lawyers for the parties had agreed that the defendants would make a professional admission that the publication of and concerning the plaintiffs were totally untrue, having reflected on the position of the plaintiffs.
Aside the call on the defendants to render an unqualified apology to the plaintiffs for the damage to their professional reputation, the parties also agreed that the defendants, among other things, would publish the full text of the terms of settlement in a well-circulated newspaper at the front page of at least the introduction and the larger part in the body of the said newspaper on three consecutive times at the defendants’ own expense.
By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson