The New Democrat, one of the numerous National Democratic Congress (NDC) mouthpieces has incurred the wrath of the Defence Minister, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor.
This has to do with its publication of yesterday, headlined, “Defence Minister Robs Ghanaians Of (sic) State Property- sells military land to his crony”.
The minister has consequently instructed his lawyers , Messrs Owusu Afriyie & Associates to institute another court action against the newspaper, claiming punitive damages.
The minister had earlier dragged the same people to court over a malicious publication, that Dr. Addo-Kufuor had opened a hospital in the United States, recruiting Philipinos to work for him, a publication he flatly denied.
Joined in the suit is the editor, Isaac Owoo and the author of the malicious article, Eva Arthur.
The skewed story is about a sky-lining ultra-modern shopping mall about which the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has concluded an arrangement with a South African firm to undertake.
With little information about the land which previously housed a group of veterans, the National Democrat reported that the Defence Minister had sold a place earmarked for the project to a New Patriotic Party (NPP) functionary.
While taking exception to the story which it described as false and inaccurate, the Ministry added that it was tendentious and sought to tarnish the image of the minister.
The reaction contained in a release signed by the Chief Director of the MOD, Mr. E.F. Ofosu-Appeah, stated that the ministry had a 10-acre land situated on Independence Avenue close to the Airport Residential area known as Legion Village on which the proposed mall was to be sited.
The ministry resettled the veterans who occupied the place at Amasaman to allow for the construction of the shopping mall.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the MOD and a certain Dr. Annor and Associates of Pretoria, South Africa concretised the deal for the construction of the of $19-million project.
“Dr. Annor and Associates were also responsible for providing the finances for the development of the new Legion Village at Amasaman which was $200,000.00.
The lease for the land is 50 years and it is clear that at the current expiry date of the lease, the Ministry of Defence will assist in renewing the lease for the further term of years,” the MOD explained.
The cost of the land was about $2.6m and the Ministry was taking in the project by way of trust arrangement and intended to utilise the purchase price for the land as equity of its contribution, the release stressed.
That the land had been sold to Yaw Gyeke Amoabeng, the Eastern Regional Chairman of the NPP, was not true, the MOD stated, adding veterans who occupied the place had been relocated to a more comfortable location at Amasaman.
The MOD rubbished as well the claim by the newspaper that housing units were being put up for squatters who shared the place with the veterans “since they should have not have been there in the first place.”
The MOD put the paper on the spot for the manner in which it treated the Mi-17 choppers, stating that “if the reporter had done some diligent work, he would have realised that the Mi-17 helicopters were procured in 2004 by the Ministry for the Ghana Air Force long before the sale of the Gulf Stream III in 2006.”
Rubbishing the story further, the ministry stressed that “it was not ‘secretly traded for some scraps called combat helicopters”. The MOD ridiculed the paper’s assertion that the choppers could not stand the tropical Ghanaian weather, attributing last month’s crash in Adukrom to this.
“There is also an Auditor-General’s report which was widely published in the print media and serialised by some of the newspapers including the Daily Guide and the Ghanaian Voice.
Additionally, the Board of Inquiry into the air crash in Adukrom is ongoing and therefore it is unprofessional to conclude that the MI-17 helicopter conveying the corpse of the late Air Marshall Otu ‘crashed in mysterious circumstances.’ ”
The ministry advised the media interested in publishing stories about it to cross-check their facts with it before going to press, to avoid misinforming the public.
The New Democrat, in a story headlined “ROBBERY: Defence Minister Robs Ghanaians OFF(sic) state property” accused the Defence Minister of being the latest source of a monumental transaction which saw him trade off the Ghana Armed Forces property situated between Opeibea House and Golden Tulip Hotel to a top member of the NPP hierarchy.
The Legion Village had been occupied by some veterans of the Second World War and a host of squatters whose relocation had been lingering even before the NPP came to power.
The veterans were finally relocated to Amasaman where the conditions are said to be better than the area under review.
