Salifu Maase aka Mugabe, Asamoah Gyan (Middle) & Akua-Donkor
Black Stars Captain, Asamoah Gyan, has filed a defamation suit against a radio presenter at Montie FM, Salifu Maase, alias ‘Mugabe’ and Madam Akua Donkor, the supposed founder of a political party, Ghana Freedom Party.
The suit, filed by the footballer’s counsel, Kissi Agyabeng of Cromwell Gray LLP, complained to the court that on June 14 and June 16 this year, during a radio show on Montie FM, Mugabe and Akua Donkor repeatedly described Asamoah Gyan as a criminal engaged in the importation of illegal arms to be used in causing mayhem in Ghana.
It complained that the plaintiff had stated in the radio show that the Black Stars captain was plotting to assassinate the President of Ghana.
The suit said Mugabe and Akua Donkor also stated on Montie FM that Asamoah Gyan, after importing the illegal arms into Ghana, instigated some residents of Techiman to use the weapons in a gun battle and one person got killed in the process.
Gyan’s lawyers attached to the suit, a transcript of an audio recording of the said radio show in which Mugabe was quoted to have described the Black Stars captain as someone who engages in match-fixing and compromises the integrity of the national team.
“Investigations we have conducted also show that during the 2010 World Cup, the penalty which you missed was because of a phone call you received while in the dressing room.
“The caller told you that if you progressed to the next stage, President Atta Mills would be glorified and so you played the ball to hit the crossbar…
“Asamoah Gyan, you are the captain. Personally you are not even good at playing football. It is just that we do not have strikers that is why we have over pampered you in Ghana and ‘excuse my language’, you keep engaging in idiocy in Ghana,” Mugabe was quoted to have said and added categorically that the footballer could choose to go to court over the allegations if he so pleased.
The writ says the footballer denies the allegations and describes them as pure malice.
It is praying the court to claim from the defendants, damages for libel and an order to restrain them from the repetition of similar libellous publications against the footballer.
Gyan’s manager, Samuel Anim Addo, recently complained about what he described as “continuous defamatory statements against Asamoah Gyan by Mugabe and Montie FM.”
“This only happens in a country where some journalists are wearing political colours and are blinded by politics to the extent they have become heartless and do not care who they destroy just so they can achieve their agenda. Some of them have become mercenaries tasked by their paymasters to create hate for innocent people; and I must say, they have become a danger to society but when you point them out, society rather defends their irresponsible journalism.
“Asamoah Gyan himself has come out to publicly deny sponsoring anyone to import arms. He has expressed his dissatisfaction over the smear campaign. Yet the ’professional’ journalists behind the hate campaign would not retract, they would not apologise, they would not offer a simple rejoinder and their mother association (GJA) and the commission which regulates them, the NMC, are silently watching the continuing irresponsibility,” Samuel Anim Addo, Manager and Spokesperson for Asamoah Gyan, told NEWS-ONE.