GJA regional president evades presidential staffer over 'stolen cash'

A critical question which the Upper East Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Eric Amoh, has always dodged when asked went unanswered again this week when a former presidential staffer, Joseph Osei Oppong-Brenya, asked him to provide details to the public as to how the monies donated towards a GJA awards ceremony were spent.

This is a question some concerned journalists in the region have been asking without any answer since the maiden awards ceremony was organised in December 2019. Since then, the GJA has not held any awards ceremony in the region.

Eric Amoh was not comfortable with the credibility questions posed on his Facebook wall on Friday 16th April 2021 by Joseph Osei Oppong-Brenya and he resorted to attempts to attack the personality of the former presidential staffer.

The under-pressure GJA chairman accused Mr Oppong-Brenya of having been involved in impersonation, but Mr Oppong-Brenya, who once practised as a journalist, kept his cool and simply told Mr Amoh that if indeed he was guilty of any crime of impersonation, he would have been in jail and not on Facebook with him.

Mr Oppong-Brenya further reminded Mr Amoh of how he got himself involved as a GJA chairman openly in the parliamentary politics of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Navrongo Central Constituency in 2020, how a group in the Navrongo Central Constituency wrote and published a damning press statement about his misconduct and other disturbing details about him on GhanaWeb and how he offered himself as a witness for BONABOTO against another journalist (Edward Adeti) in court in a case that was eventually won by the investigative journalist (Edward Adeti).

Mr Amoh did not put up any sound arguments in the Facebook banter as Mr. Oppong-Brenya got the applause for offering superior points, especially when he asked him to render an account of the awards monetary donations and Mr. Amoh, who initially was touting credibility, has remained silent without any accountability details in the full glare of the public on Facebook.

Below is an excerpt of the press statement from a group in Navrongo led by an engineer (Ing. David Adda) as published on GhanaWeb on Tuesday January 28, 2020, against Mr. Amoh with the mobile contacts of the leaders of the group (Ing. David Adda 0203893890 and Stephen Gebute 0244946739):

"We are calling on the National Leadership of the Ghana Journalist Association to investigate Mr. Amoh and follow with the necessary punitive measures.

"Again, we wish to urge journalists in the region and country to desist from electing corrupt and failures like Mr. Amoh as executives. Persons like him only care about their stomachs and have nothing better to offer the profession.

"Evident is how he puts unqualified people up as journalists for educational trips outside Ghana while right and deserving journalists rot. National GJA body must act now before he plunges the regional branch further into the ditch."

In the meantime, the public is waiting for Mr Amoh's answer to the question as to how the monies donated for the awards were spent.