Johnson Asiedu Nketia
Incumbent General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has stated that it is not in his DNA to peddle lies, as he indiscreetly reveals the party’s top secrets relating to the 2020 general election and the presidential election petition.
According to him, the NDC 2020 presidential candidate, ex-President John Dramani Mahama had issues with the appointments of party agents and collators of elections.
He said Mr. Mahama had wanted the national executives to hold on to the appointments of Director of Elections and Director of IT until he was elected flagbearer because of trust issues.
In an audio, capturing the revelations during a campaign with some delegates, Mr. Asiedu Nketia, who is popularly known as General Mosquito, said Mr. Mahama sent the message to them through his right hand man, Julius Debrah, at a national executive meeting called at the instance of the appointments.
He said about 100 people, with five people drawn from each region together with MPs and the national executives, attended the meeting to approve the appointees.
“[Former] President Mahama could not attend the meeting, but he sent a message through Julius to inform us that he begged us to reserve two of the appointments till he was elected flagbearer for a decision to be taken.
“If he is the flagbearer it means that the presidential election is about him; it was Mahama’s election, and therefore the agents and collators ought to be officers he (Mahama) trusted. If those appointments were waited upon for his inputs, it was in good direction,” he stated.
Mr. Nketia, who is campaigning to unseat the incumbent National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, said, “This issue was so simple, but surprisingly whether it was Julius who had a problem with Ampofo in the Eastern Region or not, Ampofo hit the roof.”
“He said Julius wanted to say there was no leader in the party until Mahama was elected to do appointments. So I want to tell you that right now we have a leader which is me, Ofosu-Ampofo. Allow me to do my work,” the NDC Chief Scribe noted.
He added, “We were all surprised because until then we did not know he had a problem with Mahama or any other person. He said no to the suggestion, in spite of various pleadings to him.”
According to him, eventually, the meeting was divided into two – Mahama faction and Ampofo faction, and they started insulting each other.
“This forced the then 10 regional chairmen to hold a caucus meeting and came out with a resolution to advise Chairman Ofosu-Ampofo that they were on a slippery road. Because no matter what you do, Mahama would still win the flagbearership of the NDC. So he is a presumptive leader and the suggestion was also not bad,” he intimated.
General Mosquito said Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo banged his hand on the table and threatened to resign as National Chairman, if he was not allowed to make those appointments.
“So I stood up and said if we put the appointments on hold and allowed the Chairman to resign, it would be a big issue for us. The law of the NDC indicates the Chairman is the leader until a flagbearer is elected, and we should allow him to do the appointments. So we did the appointments,” he recounted.
He continued, “Before this, Akamba had stated at the meeting that the one we were appointing as Director of IT, Grifix, had something to do with Bawumia, and we should be careful in entrusting such a thing to him. All these persuasive suggestions did not work.”
He stated that when the time came for the NDC to do its collation, the system that the IT Director brought and touted as robust got crushed after collation of results of five regions.
“That is the truth. That is why we could not get results at the right time to challenge the Electoral Commission,” he disclosed.
He added, “We all heard, from region to region that we surveyed we considered to have won; even if we didn’t win, Akufo-Addo did not win the first round. The worst case scenario would have been a run off, but there was no document to prove this.”
“When we said we would go to court, we began to do manual collation. We sent people to go round for pink sheets to collate the results, and the Chairman again jumped onto the committee and said he would do the collation himself.
“They brought some university students for the collation and when the time was due to be in the dock, the result they presented to me was nothing good to write home about. If you tried presenting it as evidence, you would be embarrassed,” he asserted.
“But in Ghana, people respect and consider me to be knowledgeable in election matters, and that I would be first or second on the list of such knowledgeable people.
“For me to go into the dock to defend figures that were indefensible was not good for my reputation and I decided not to take it to court. So they asked me to go with them to see lawyer Tsikata.
“We took all those documents to lawyer Tsikata. These are not matters we should be talking about. We left all the documents with him and after perusal, he called us back to come and take our documents,” he revealed.
Mosquito said Mr. Tsikata told them to look for a new lawyer since the documents did not provide sufficient evidence and could not be relied on in court to make a case.
“He, however, suggested to us that the Electoral Commission officials had breached various laws and the information that we had to prove our victory was on their machines.
“If the court ordered the Chairperson to bring forth the information on the EC’s machines, then the truth would be revealed, and that should be our bargaining chip.
“That is why when we went to court and they asked me about my results, I said I did not bring any result. I hope you all heard. I don’t know how to lie,” he intimated.
BY Ernest Kofi Adu