Charlotte Osei
Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has said his warning and advice to Mrs Charlotte Osei against accepting the Electoral Commission Chairperson appointment, has been vindicated by her dismissal by President Nana Akufo-Addo.
According to the Nadowli-Kaleo lawmaker, the EC chair job “is a turf too rough” for a woman.
Mrs Osei was sacked along with her two deputies Amadu Sulley and Georgina Opoku Amankwah, over procurement breaches and incompetence, per the recommendations of a committee set up by Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo to probe the three commissioners.
Reacting to her dismissal in an interview with Moro Awudu on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Thursday, 26 July 2018, Mr Bagbin said: “If you ask Mrs Charlotte Osei, she will tell you that I advised her not to accept that position. I told her I’ve been in the game and I know it and I told her that if she had another option like going to the Supreme Court, she should rather accept that, but she told me candidly: as for her, she is available to serve the nation in any capacity, and she got there and these are the results…”
Mrs Osei, shortly after her dismissal, borrowed the literary voice of renowned African American poet Maya Angelou, through her poem ‘I Rise’, to communicate her resilience and steadfastness in the face adversity.
She posted on Instagram thus:
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. ©?maya angelou
-Classfmonline