Jake Asked To Account For Stadium Disaster Fund!

Billons of Cedis & Millions of Dollars Nowhere To Be Found.

As the nation remembers sadly the horrendous death of over 126 soccer fans at the Accra Sports Stadium 10 years ago, the NDC is calling for accountability as regards the Stadium Disaster Fund that was set up by Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, then Chief of Staff and Minister for Presidential Affairs, to ostensibly source funds to lessen the pain and burden of the families of the deceased.

Richard Quarshigah, NDC Propaganda Secretary, in a statement issued in Accra on the 10th anniversary of the disaster, has called for Jake, the current National Chairman of the NPP, to immediately come public and account for the billions of cedis and millions of foreign currency that accrued to the Fund.

In the said statement, and also speaking in Citi FM’s Midday News yesterday, Mr. Quarshigah said that the NPP National Chairman cannot continue to run away from the issue and that Ghanaians are demanding from Jake, a complete and comprehensive ledger showing the contributions and matching disbursements.

According to Richard Quarshigah, the blood of the dead is crying for justice and on the 10th anniversary of that blot on the nation’s football image, the NDC will not allow Jake to sleep soundly until he does what is right and proper. “Just like in the case of the murdered Ya-Na, the blood of the dead football fans is crying for justice and Jake must as a matter of urgency tell us what he did with the money and how the money was used” Mr. Quarshigah said.

“The money does not belong to Jake; it is public money which belongs to the families of the dead persons and Jake cannot continue behave as if the money belongs to him” Mr. Quarshigah added.

Doing a memory re-call, the NDC Propaganda Secretary recounted how Mr. Chuck Kofi Wayo, sometime in 2002, revealed that on a few occasions that he had visited Jake in his house, the then Chief of Staff, totally toasted on Gin and Vodka, kept boasting about how rich he had become via the monies that accrued to the Fund.

It was in revealing how Jake had sat on the Fund that Chuck Wayo also revealed that Jake had been referring to Kufuor as an “Ashanti Bastard”.

In the wake of Kofi Wayo’s startling revelations, Jake had a cardiac arrest and spent weeks on admission at the Korle Bu Cardiothoracic Center.

Since 2002, when Kofi Wayo made the revelation about Jake boasting that he had gotten rich via the Disaster Fund, Jake has not opened his mouth once to debunk Wayo’s story.

If it is the case that silence means consent, then it stands to reason that Jake’s silence is corroborating Kofi Wayo’s story.

And it is for this reason that the NDC, through its National Propaganda Secretary, Richard Quarshigah, is asking NPP National Chairman, Jake Otanka Obetsebi Lamptey, to stop playing the ostrich and come out publicly to account for the colossal amount of money that accrued to the Fund.

In a related development, Mr. Herbert Mensah, CEO of Kotoko at the time of the disaster as well as Mr. Harry Zakour, then CEO of Accra Hearts of Oak, have also made it abundantly clear that they don’t know what became of monies that accrued to the Fund.

Speaking on a number of radio stations yesterday (especially Radio Gold), both men did not hide the fact that they have paid, and continue to pay bills of the families of the victims and are damn clueless as to what Jake did with the money.

According to Herbert Mensah, it would be interesting to know what happened to all the money because from his perspective, he does not think the colossal amount of money that accrued to the Fund was used for its purpose. Without wanting to hit hard at Jake, Herbert, speaking to Radio Gold’s Alhassan S. Suhiyini, said that whatever amount that Jake must have disbursed, is nothing compared to the huge amount or money that came the way of the Fund.

Whichever angle the matter is looked from, it is ipso facto that Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, has a lot of questions to answer as regards the May 9th Stadium Disaster Fund and if he has been running away from the issue for 10 years, cannot continue to do so any longer.

And it is the same Jake who is thinking that he will be able to lead the NPP to an electoral victory in 2012 and foist Akufo-Addo on Ghana so the country can continue to move in the wrong direction of, looting, stealing, lack of transparency, and not accounting for the use of public funds?

Ghanaians will speak loudly come 2012 and Jake will know that if he was able to foist Kufuor on Ghana in 2000, there is no way he will be allowed to foist Akufo-Addo on the nation come 2012.