Kweku Baako lied before the National Reconciliation Commission – Rawlings

Former President Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings says his ‘distant friend’ Kweku Baako Jr. misinformed the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) about one of the coup plotters who wanted to overthrow his regime.

The National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) was set up by the erstwhile Kufuor administration to reconcile the country over some of the ills meted out to citizens by military regimes, especially.

According to Rawlings, no soldier during his regime tortured Christian Kofi Goka.

“Nobody did any such thing and professional soldiers don’t do things like that actually,” Mr Rawlings told Asaase Radio’s Kwaku Sakyi-Addo.

Rawlings added that Baako Jr., currently the New Crusading Guide’s editor-in-chief, at the time the NRC was sitting, wanted Ben Ephson, the editor of the Daily Dispatch to join him at the NRC to put out such falsehood and “Ben Ephson refused to be part of it”.

“I think he [Ben Ephson] knew this kind of makeup wasn’t good enough…just to poison the atmosphere against us,” Rawlings explained.

When asked if he was ready to meet up with some of his old buddies such as Kweku Baako, Kwesi Pratt, Ben Ephson, Akoto Ampaw and others, Rawlings responded that they had done a lot of damage and asked instead if they were prepared to undo some of the damage.

“A chap like Kwesi Adu, a really nice good friend of mine in the past, once wrote something nasty, ugly about me when he came back into the country that I had in the early days [during the PNDC regime] thrown cement powder into someone’s throat and poured water after it. I didn’t see nor read but a very important lady in the journalistic profession who called (sic) to read that thing; I was very sad that he [Kwesi Adu] could make such a vicious story against me,” Rawlings recalled.

“I was contemplating on sending that story to Parliament but I thought, “Would he write this if it wasn’t true but I’m sure he might have known that I was doing everything possible to contain things like that? And I will never do something like that and yet he had to put this on me.”

Rawlings explained that if these so-called friends can do things of this nature, he cannot just wake up and sit with people like that.

“No! No!! They’ve done a lot of damage,” he stated.