Stan Dogbe
An innocuous narration by Okyenhene Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin II over how former Vice President Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur might have died last Friday has attracted a disrespectful reaction from former President John Mahama’s trusted aide, Stanislav Xoese Dogbe.
The Okyenhene in a short video that has gone viral appeared to be drumming home the point that the country’s emergency health response policy was weak and had used the events surrounding the sudden death of the late vice president as a case in point.
Stan Dogbe’s comment has attracted the anger of some Akyem youth calling for an apology from him and subsequent retraction of the offensive statement.
Pick-Up Van
The Okyenhene’s narration of how a prominent person like the former vice president was ferried to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra in a pick-up vehicle whilst in distress appears to have incensed Stan Dogbe who fired disrespectfully at the prominent chief in a reaction.
He said the Okyenhene should “cease the recklessness of seeking cheap popularity by going to public events and seeking to share coloured stories.”
In the video, the Okyenhene was heard saying the former Vice President who died suddenly on Friday, 29 June 2018, was transported to the hospital at the back of a pick-up, when efforts to revive him failed and added that there was no ambulance to convey the ex-leader.
Good Friends
“As it has been for 14 years, any time I go there, I meet my friend (Mr. Amissah-Arthur) and we will talk, shake hands … and then go to our different machines… I heard ‘bang’! Three women in the gym were screaming, I left my machine and went and there laid my friend trying to find some air to breathe,” he narrated.
The Okyenhene added “we gathered around him and pumped his heart as hard as we could, yelled out his name; his wife was calling out: ‘Jesus, save him!’ I just said: ‘Call the ambulance, let’s take him to the hospital.’ There were about seven, eight of us, and something dawned on me. When we took him out, there was no ambulance, there was no car, so we threw the former vice-president in the back of a pick-up and drove off to 37.”
Cheeky Response
The former President’s aide said cheekily on social media that the prominent chief had his luxury vehicle around but was complaining that there was no ambulance for them to carry the ex-Vice President and appeared to suggest that the Okyenhene does not have a ‘good heart’ and was being insincere in the narration.
“Someone should please tell the chief that he was not the only one present when the tragedy struck our late boss and VP of this country to go around talking,” he fired, adding “he had a luxury vehicle there, and many others had their cars there, if he had a good heart and a spirit of helping others, maybe; just maybe, he would have sent him to the hospital in his car.”
He said “granted that he was sent to the hospital in someone’s vehicle, a pick-up; is the back seat of the vehicle, not the bucket of the pick-up as his statement sought to portray. Which gym in this country has a standby ambulance anyway?”
Okyenhene’s ‘Son’
He even extended his attack onto President Akufo-Addo by sarcastically describing the President as the Okyenhene’s ‘son’ (because they hail from the same town – Kyebi).
“Your ‘son’, Nana Addo is watching on as the National Ambulance Service collapses… deal with it and leave the family of our late boss to mourn their son, husband, grandpa, father, uncle and relation,” he fired.
By William Yaw Owusu