I was jailed because of ¢350 – Teacher

After spending three years at the Winneba prison without the knowledge of any family member, a basic teacher has finally been set free after a good Samaritan paid a fine on his behalf.

Gabriel Agyemang sharing his story revealed that a friend he was trying to help accused him of conniving with someone to dupe him (the friend) of ¢350 which landed him a fine of ¢2,800 or 6-years jail term in default.

According to Gabriel Agyemang who was teaching at Asankragua (Western region) at the time, his friend who was contesting to become an Assembly member in his area (at Apam in the Central region) asked for assistance to win the election.

He had to shuttle between Asankragua and the Apam District on several occasion to help his friend with various projects in the runoff to the elections and as time went by, his friend decided to set up a division two football team and asked him to help with the registration process.

Gabriel says he went to the Agona Swedru District Football Association together with his friend to begin the registration process for the football team and that was the beginning of his sad story.

“We met a well-dressed man at the entrance of the office and told him we were looking for the person in-charge of registering second division team. He told us he was the one but was on break, so we should discuss the matter there,” he narrated.

The man whose name Gabriel gave as Mr Simpson told them to get passport size picture for the team members and bring it along with ¢350 for the registration process to begin adding that he will take 1500 when he completes the work.

Since his friend was spending a lot of money on various projects for his campaign he levied members of the team to cater for part of the money needed for the registration whilst he topped up with the rest.

Gabriel said about three weeks after taking the pictures and ¢300 to Mr Simpson, he called to inform them he was done with the registration but refused to pick up their calls afterwards. They later found out that he was a ‘Goro boy’ and not what he claimed to be.

His friend’s opponent was using the unfortunate situation against him and out of fear of losing credibility and the elections, his friend reported him to the police for defrauding him and was later arrested.

Gabriel said, “When I was preparing to return to Asankragua, my friend called me to come for money to use for transport and when I came out there was a police officer there and he said the inspector had asked him to bring me… when we got to the police station I was put in handcuffs and detained”.

His phone was taken away from him and he was not allowed to call any family member or friend to come and pay the amount of money for which he was being held in cell and even when he was taken to court and fined ¢2,800 he was still refused the permission to go contact family members for the money to be paid.

“I appealed to the judge to allow me go to my hometown with two officers to get the money to pay the fine and transportation to the place and he accepted my plea. However, after consultations with the prosecutor, registrar and police officer, the judge said he had been informed that I am a hardened criminal who will let my men ambush the car on our way to Kumasi, so he rejected my plea”.

Gabriel Agyemang ended up spending 3 years and 2 months in prison because he wasn’t given the opportunity to contact family and friends to come to his aid.