Mills Defreezes Francis Poku’s Ex-Gratia

Information reaching The Herald says that President John Atta Mills has shown magnanimity towards the ex-Minister of National Security and ex-National Security Chief, Mr. Francis Kweku Poku, who was forced into exiled in the United Kingdom (UK), by ordering the payment of his ex-gratia to him, just like all others who served as ministers in the Kufuor administration.

This was after President Mills realized that he had been excluded from the list of the beneficiaries of the end-of-service benefit payable to public servants after their tenure.

Mr. Poku’s exclusion, The Herald was hinted, was deliberate due to his disagreement with ex-President John Kufuor, whose administration he diligently, served.

The soft-spoken Mr. Poku had to flee the shores of Ghana in 2007, during the Kufuor regime, after a high-profile disagreement with Mr. Kufuor, which resulted in heavily armed soldiers, led by the then Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Lt. General J. B. Danquah, besieging his (Francis Poku)official North Ridge residence in Accra, apparently to whisk him away to an unknown location.

He fled the country, and emerged in the UK, days later. Mr. Poku had earlier been in exile in UK during the Rawlings’ PNDC Administration, because he supposedly played some very instrumental roles in the Ignatius Kutu Achempong’s junta at the then Special Branch, present day Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).

Mr. Poku has confirmed to The Herald that, indeed, the Mills Administration has made some payments to him, just like the other ministers who served in the Kufuor Administration.

In a brief telephone conservation yesterday with this reporter from his base in London, the ex-Security Chief described the payment as “part of the first payments made to the ex-ministers”, adding that his case was not “exceptional.”

Mr. Poku, a police officer by profession, got re-instated into the Ghana Police Service, and promoted to the rank of a Police Commissioner after 20 years in exile. He later retired with all his entitlements fully paid. It is not clear whether the police administration also paid him some money by way of his accumulated salaries for the period when he was in exile.

Meanwhile, Accra-based Citi FM reports that President Mills has ordered immediate release of the ex-gratia of Members of Parliament who served under the Fourth Parliament of the Fourth Republic.

President Mills ordered a freeze on the ex-gratia weeks after taking office, following a storm of public outrage triggered by the sheer size of funds to be paid to each beneficiary.

The President’s fiat which froze payment of the ex-gratia also followed a lengthy back-and-forth argument over whether the document based on which the funds were to be paid, had received proper Parliamentary and Executive approval under the erstwhile Kufour administration.

Details of how much in all will be paid to each beneficiary are not clear, but Citi News Parliamentary Correspondent Richard Sky reports that “on the average a recipient may receive as much as 80,000 Ghana cedis.”

The President’s order to the Finance Ministry to release funds to pay the former MPs came days ahead of last weekend’s National Delegates Congress of the NDC, which elected the incumbent as the 2012 Presidential Candidate for the ruling party.

The timing of the Presidential order has caused the NPP MP for Manhyia, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, to accuse the President of using the ex-gratia to win votes at the NDC congress.

However, the Deputy Majority Leader, Rashid Pelpuo, has said that the Manhyia MP got it all wrong. He described the allegation as unfortunate, “vile” and “vicious”, adding that there is no iota of truth in the claims made by the Manhyia MP.

“This is terribly unfounded and vicious. There is no iota of truth in this very vile accusation. There are members from the opposition NPP who are saying they are broke and need money, and there are members from our side also who say they need money.

“So there is pressure from both sides, asking us to expedite action on the ex-gratia. So anybody who has gone round to spin it and give it that kind of vicious image, is very unacceptable”.