Mustapha Hamid addressing the media
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has accused President John Dramani Mahama and his brother Ibrahim Mahama of attempting to influence its Northern Regional chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu with cash and vehicle for him to smear the party’s flag bearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Mr Bugri Naabu was said to have been offered GH¢500,000 and a brand new Mitsubishi Pajero four-wheel drive by the president sometime in October this year.
Mustapha Abdul Hamid, spokesman for the NPP presidential candidate, made the disclosures at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Accra yesterday.
According to Mustapha – who was visibly in tears over the brazen naked bribery targeted at opposition leaders – the president in the company of his brother and one Awal, met with Bugri Naabu and offered the cash and the vehicle for his comfort.
They also allegedly offered to pay his (Naabu’s) outstanding contract sum of GH¢300,000 and another V8 vehicle, should he agree to help them bring down the NPP leader.
They purportedly promised him other juicy road contracts and mouthwatering deals if the president was retained in power after the December 7 elections.
It will be recalled that a similar Mitsubishi Pajero was given to Madam Akua Donkor of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP) sometime back, together with a house which she made public. She has since not missed an opportunity to attack the NPP and its flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo.
Meeting
But Mustapha Hamid gave vivid details of a meeting at the president’s brother’s house located at the Airport residential area on Friday, October 28, 2016, involving the president, his brother Ibrahim Mahama and Bugri Naabu during which they gave Bugri Naabu the GH¢500,000 [¢5billion old currency] to not only leave the NPP, but to also run down the person of Akufo-Addo by accusing him of being tribalistic.
President Mahama had lately been attacking the NPP leader with ethnocentric comments.
Aside that was an offer for a brand new V8 Toyota Land Cruiser, brand new V6 Mitsubishi Pajero which has since been delivered, brand new Nissan pick-up and an amount of GH¢3.3 million.
The Deal
Under the deal, Mustapha revealed that Bugri Naabu was supposed to resign and damage Akufo-Addo beyond repairs as the elections zero in.
Bugri was reported to have subsequently lodged the money at the Abossey Okai branch of the Prudential Bank where he holds an account number 0090985590013 for safe keeping because it was a Saturday and only a few branches opened for business.
“According to the president, Bugri should paint Akufo-Addo as a rabid anti-northern person, who could never be trusted to advance the cause of the people of the North. He was supposed to tell the world that it was Nana Akufo-Addo who got him to turn against Afoko and that he has gotten wiser,” he stated.
Apart from that, Mr Hamid indicated that Bugri was also supposed to say that “Nana Addo was knocking the head of one Northerner against another and that Akufo-Addo was running a one-man show; the NPP is led by a dictator; if he doesn’t like you, you are in trouble and that it was Nana who got him to suspend the Regional Women’s Organiser. Nana hates Northerners so our people should stop saying NPP is a better alternative when Nana is the one in-charge.”
According to Hamid, Bugri asked them how they expected him to survive after spewing these lies against an innocent man and they told him they were prepared to fly him abroad, put him up in a hotel and fly Ghanaian journalists there to interview him and that he (Bugri) should even say he was afraid for his life that is why he had to flee Ghana.
But the man was said to have expressed surprise at the reason the president was offering him such a mouth-watering deal, considering the fact that government owed him an amount of GH¢247,000 for a feeder road contract which certificate had been ready since the year 2013 when he had not even been elected Regional Chairman but the government refused to pay because he is an NPP activist.
Offers
Mustapha indicated that President Mahama and his men were prepared to give Bugri a road contract worth GH¢190 million.
There and then, they were said to have offered him work on a road that he had already worked on years ago under the NPP – the Osenase-Apenamang road – with the president directing him to go and see the Director of the Department of Feeder Roads, Francis Digber.
Mr Naabu was said to have immediately reported the full details of the meeting to Nana Akufo-Addo – who was out of Accra campaigning – through a trusted aide who is also a senior member of the NPP campaign.
A few days later, to show good faith, Mustapha claimed that Ibrahim Mahama joined a high-powered NDC delegation, led by the Deputy Chief of Staff, Kenneth Wujangi, with Minister of State, Dr. Mustapha Ahmed and Ghana’s Ambassador to Angola, Moses Bukari Mabengba to the funeral of Bugri Naabu’s daughter where Ibrahim Mahama and President Mahama allegedly donated GH¢20,000 and GH¢10,000 respectively.
Evidence
According to the NPP, checks had established that white V8 engine Mistubishi Pajero with registration number GS 687 – 16 which was given ostensibly to influence Bugri Naabu, was imported into Ghana by Malin Investment Limited, a company owned by a certain Hawah Hayisi Aryee Mahama and Frank Nuhu Alormasor, a personal assistant to President Mahama in August, 2016; and the duty paid on it was GH¢40,274.70.
He provided documentary evidence of the vehicle’s ownership which had been transferred into Bugri Naabu’s name.
The Mitsubishi Pajero V8 Car
Caution
In all these, his message to the rank and file of the NPP, especially polling agents was, “The NDC will try to bribe you. Please do not sell your party. The country depends on your loyalty, your integrity and your vigilance to effect the change that is before us.”
“My message to the rest of Ghanaians is this: the NDC will come to attempt to buy your votes, after they have made you poorer. It is your own money they will bring to you. Please take it and use it but let them know that your vote is too precious to be bought. You are not for sale. Your future is not for sale. Ghana is not for sale. Change is here! Let us go out in our numbers and reject ethnic bigotry, bribery and corruption and division,” he charged.
Denial
The John Mahama 2016 Campaign team has however, dismissed the allegation of attempted bribe, describing it as spurious.
It has urged Ghanaians to treat any such allegation with the contempt that it deserves as the “NPP has mastered the art of fabricating stories in the period leading to elections in an attempt to influence the minds of the electorate.”
Speaking on Asempa FM’s ‘Ekosii sen’ show Tuesday, the NDC campaign coordinator, Kofi Adams, stated that the allegation falls flat as the NDC, knowing the sort of person Bugri Naabu is, would never use him in such a deal.
“What I heard the NPP say at the press conference requires someone with high, a very high, level of intelligence to do. I’m not sure Bugri Naabu meets up to that standard. With the sort of poor quality of leadership he’s giving his party in the Northern Region, Bugri Naabu should not be the one to be engaged in such a move.”
“In 2008, NPP hired a gentleman, killed a goat and smeared its blood on his cloths claiming he had been beaten by NDC supporters, of which the NPP held a press conference about. The NPP has mastered the art of fabricating stories. What can’t they do?” Kofi Adams posited.
He continued, “This is a party which per its history is quick to hold press conferences anytime elections are approaching and make such allegations. In 2008, the NPP came out with a hit list claiming ex-President Rawlings sent a mail to state that the persons on the list would be killed as soon as the NDC wins the election.”
Kofi Adams added, “They won the election in 2008. Pastor Mensah Otabil is still alive and moves freely around and still preaching. Indeed, President Mahama recently gave Otabil’s university a charter; no one even attacked him with a blade, but the NPP could sponsor an agenda that there was a hit list. The NPP knows that the elections are up by next week so they are out there to throw dust into the eyes of Ghanaians to get the electorate to vote against the NDC and President Mahama, but that will not wash.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu