Bugri Naabu Punches Rawlings

…Says He Was Behind Destruction of His¢5 Billion-Hotel

Founding member of NPP Mr. Daniel Bugri Naabu Managing Director of Bugri Naabu Group of Companies has accused former head of State Mr. J.J. Rawlings, of engineering the destruction of his 5 billion-cedi INTER-ROYAL HOTEL, which had been situated at Tamale in the Northern region in 1994.

The pain and misery of Mr. Bugri Naabu is that his first class hotel, built by the sweat of his eyebrow, the substance of his spine and under back-breaking conditions, was destroyed in a supposed democratic dispensation in 1994, two years after the country elected to become a democracy.

Mr. Bugri Naabu thought it must have been because he hosted NPP meetings in the hotel at the time, as well as served as a sleeping haven for NPP presidential candidates Adu Boahen, Agyekum Kufuor, Dr. Dzane-Selby, Peter Ala Adjetey and other Party stewards during the organization of DANQUAH-BUSIA CLUB back in the day, which must have been an excuse as to why the massive edifice was broken down into rubbles at the time.

The NPP founding member beat a retreat down memory lane and said, even though it was during the Nanumba-Dagomba-Konkomba war none of his seven other houses dotted around the Tamale township which had his mother and children as occupants was touched. In the same vein, absolutely nothing was done to any of his family members during the period.

Bugri Naabu accused the current NDC regional chairman Alhaji Sumani Zakari (also known as suffer to gain) who was then the vice chairman of the Northern region NDC of leading the demolishing gang for the exercise. Digging extensively into his archives, he recollected that Alhaji Zakari stormed the region’s Fire Service headquarters, and warned the personnel not to attempt to venture to rescue the INTER ROYAL HOTEL when it was set on fire. He eventually ensured the mounting of roadblocks to stop rescuers from performing a rescue act on the hotel, when the gang demolished it and set it on fire.

“As to why exactly the whole edifice was razed to the ground in a democratic era minus any reference to the law courts, no reason has been given till date and I cannot tell exactly why,” the Managing director told THE SUN hounds last week. However, Mr. Bugri Naabu’s guess was that Rawlings’ government used the ethnic war as smokescreen, to pull down the giant edifice.

According to the NPP founding member at the time that the hotel was razed to the ground, the Ghana Police had a contingent stationed in the facility together with their weapons, ostensibly to stop the NANUMBA-KONKOMBA war. He revealed rather shockingly, how Alhaji Zakari’s mobsters stole all the Police’s weapons as well as other belongings.

Mr. Bugri Naabu told THE SUN that what drives him to believe that the demolition of his hotel was politically motivated was that, all others whose property were destroyed were compensated with monies, bags of cement, nails and other building materials yet till date he has not been given a pesewa for the heinous crime perpetrated against him. The NPP founding member revealed that having discovered how mistaken they were to have demolished his hotel, Rawlings’ government promised to reimburse him to the exact tune of the cost of the gigantic hotel but that has not been fulfilled. Bugri-Naabu wondered if the deliberate action by Rawlings and his cohorts in a democratic setting was not a slap in the face of private enterprise. He bitterly recounted how prior to the destruction of his hotel he was locked up and detained for nine months for no apparent reason without being arraigned before any court of law. “I was first sent to Sunyani Police Cells, Tamale Prison and later on to the Accra James Fort Prison when they illegally arrested me,” he recounted. After his release from Prison, Bugri Naabu related that he was informed by authorities at the Ghana Highways and Feeder Roads that, higher authorities had ordered that he should not be given any contracts and so went without them until there was a change in government. Continuing, the NPP founding member took the opportunity to praise and pay glowing tribute to the founding fathers of the Party S.D. Dombo, J.B. Danquah, Jatoe Kaleo, Prof. K.A. Busia, B.K. Adama, J.A. Briamah, Umoro Salifu and co for cherishing all the forms of freedom that have made democracy tick in Ghana today, and endeavouring to defend the tradition with their lives. His INTER ROYAL HOTEL, destroyed under NDC-government eyes had 31 apartments comprising suites, double rooms and the like all fitted with state-of-the-art facilities and manned by a team of Russian expatriates was pitifully pulled down in 1994, two years into the fourth republic.