Graphic Board Chair: 'Kenu betrayed us; we’ll take a decision on him'

The Board Chair of the Graphic Communication Group, Dr Doris Yaa Dartey, has accused the Daily Graphic’s Ashanti Regional Editor, Daniel Kenu, of betraying the company.

Dr Dartey told STARR NEWS’ Ashanti regional Correspondent Isaac Bediako Justice in an exclusive interview that Kenu’s decision to withdraw from court, assault charges he pressed against Baffour Gyan, big brother of Black Stars’ skipper Asamoah Gyan, was treacherous.

“To surprise and shock all of us in the courtroom of his decision, I think it was a betrayal, it was a betrayal to the company, and it still is a betrayal to the journalism profession”, Dartey said Saturday.

Kenu was assaulted by Gyan and a gang of muscled thugs at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi, just a day to the Stars’ AFCON qualifier game with the Cranes of Uganda.

The attack was Baffour Gyan’s way of getting back at Kenu, for a question he posed to Asamoah Gyan, two days earlier, at a press conference, about whether the Black Stars’ skipper sacrificed his friend and fellow celebrity, Castro, for spiritual purposes.

Castro and a female companion, Janet Bandu, went missing on July 6 while jet skiing at a Resort in Ada in the Greater Accra Region. They still have not been found, but cannot be declared dead until after seven years and seven days.

The assault on the Journalist was condemned by the Ghana Journalists Association, the Graphic Communication Group, as well as civil society groups and Journalists, who goaded Kenu on to go the whole hog in seeking justice in Court.

However, in a letter to the Kumasi Circuit Court, Friday, Kenu said the recent death of his Uncle, as a result of the media attention the case brought onto his family, as well as his own rising blood pressure, coupled with the failing health of his mother, informed his decision to discontinue the case.

His MD Ken Ashigbey had earlier said the Graphic Communication Group would pursue the case to its end.

Despite expressing the company’s disappointment with Kenu’s decision, Graphic’s Board Chair said: “I do, however, respect his personal opinion. I hope he was not coerced by some other powers to take that decision. I hope it was his own decision. If it was, of course we as a company respect that decision, and I hope he can live peacefully with his own decision”.

Dartey, nonetheless, pointed out that Kenu should have known that the attack on him was an attack on all journalists and thus, the case was not all about himself.

“He missed the point that the story is bigger than him. If the story was about him, the MD of Graphic would not have flown in early morning from Accra to Kumasi to stand behind him,” she asserted.

She said the company is deliberating on what to do with Kenu now.

“The decision the company will take from this point onwards, I will not want to speak about it. We would take a decision and inform him, so I wouldn’t want to make a statement about what we will do from this point onwards. But we have to have a conversation, and we are already having the conversation”.