The offices of DAILY GUIDE in Kumasi were invaded and locked up in the early hours of yesterday by some youth claiming to be members of Kumasi Youth Association (KuYA).
The attack comes days after a publication on the recent Ghana International Bank’s court case in London against its former staff which was first published by UK’s Daily Telegraph that linked the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.
The youth group, which has been angered by the reportage on the issue, is demanding a retraction and apology from the newspaper.
It has threatened to permanently close the offices of the newspaper.
The faceless KuYA members locked up the offices on the top floor of a three-storey building located on the Maxwell Road at Fante New Town – close to the labour office roundabout with two additional padlocks.
They left behind warning notices and called on the newspaper to respect the King.
“With immediate effect KuYA demands an apology and front page retraction and further comes [sic] to the royal palace to apologise to His Royal Majesty. Failure to do so will lead to permanent closure of your office in Kumasi. The kingdom [sic] is bigger than any individual or company,” one of the notices read.
Other inscriptions on the wall of the building read, “Be warned Daily Guide,” “Respect Otumfuo, Daily Guide be warned.”
The News Editor of the newspaper, Alhaji AR Gomda, described the development as worrying and wondered why such attack should happen.
“We just did an innocuous story, very careful about the subject we were dealing with. The headline was okay. I don’t know why they would behave this way,” he told Starr FM.
Alhaji Gomda wondered why the youth group went on rampage and locked up the paper’s offices.
Meanwhile, the padlocks have since been broken by the police who conducted inspection in the various offices of the newspaper to ascertain whether anything had been destroyed by the angry youth. They have since taken over the case.
The attacks on DAILY GUIDE appear to have been instigated by a radio presenter of Okay FM in Accra called Kwame Nkrumah Tikese, who did a live interview and virtually coached interviewees to express their opinions on the subject matter.
Curiously on the day of the said live radio programme, almost all the media outlets, both print and electronic and even state-owned, carried the same story, but Kwame Nkrumah Tikese made DAILY GUIDE the focus of his programme.
He opened the phone lines and known indigenes like Yamoah Ponkoh of the NDC and Collins Owusu-Amankwa, who is the MP for Manhyia North, spewed out gibberish laden with toxic.
There was nowhere in the three publications by DAILY GUIDE that imputed wrongdoing on the part of the Asantehene.
In fact, all publications on the subject matter, including personal opinions expressed by readers, had been in defence of the respected King.
By William Yaw Owusu