My Party Is In Power - Kofi Wayo Boasts

Alhaji Alhasan Saeed, former General Secretary of the moribund United Renaissance Party (URP), was yesterday arrested by bodyguards of Kofi Wayo and bundled to the Nima Police Station to what the suspect said was a show of power.

According to Alhaji Saeed, he was accused by his former boss, Kofi Wayo of embezzling his money and raping a girl in the Volta Region. "Two persons, bodyguards of Kofi Wayo, arrested me at about 6.15am on the orders of their boss and took me to the Nima Police Station where the officers appeared not to understand what the whole episode was about," Saeed told the Daily Guide newspaper.

The suspect had worked with Kofi Wayo when their Party, the URP, was alive on the local political turf and headquartered in a container near the Teshie/Nungua Estates in Accra. His captors left the suspect in the hands of the Nima Police, who, finding something unusual about the case whose report was made since 2006, asked him to wait for Kofi Wayo to come personally, especially since he (Kofi) had said he was going to get some National Security officials to take over the case. "Kofi Wayo boasted that with the NDC in power, the party, he said he helped come to power, he will deal with me," Saeed told Daily Guide at the Nima Police Station. Saeed alleged further that Kofi Wayo had accused him of destroying his political career. According to him, the Nima Police asked him to wait under a tree for some 30 minutes, after which if the so-called National Security personnel did not show up, he could leave the premises of the station.

When Daily Guide called Kofi Wayo, he denied saying he was going to ask some National Security officials to come and pick Saeed to their office. He narrated that all he said was that he was going to the Nima Police Station to take the suspect to the CID headquarters because, according to him, ACP Robert Ayalingo had knowledge of the case when the was at Wa in the Upper West Region as regional commander.

He said for the past three years, Saeed had been lodging in a hotel using his name, Kofi Wayo. "He used politics to commit crime. He used my name to lodge in a hotel and does not want to pay. Do you know Horak hotel? He has been there several times. I am taking him to the CID headquarters", he boasted. Eventually, when Wayo turned up at the Nima Police Station around noon in the company of two persons who he claimed to be security personnel, Kofi Wayo abandoned the case. He did not take the suspect to the CID headquarters as he threatened earlier, as Saeed left the Nima Police Station, having spent several hours there, although not in cells.

Somewhere in 2006, Kofi Wayo reported his General Secretary to the Nima Police Station for allegedly stealing his $500, a complaint which made the headlines. The relationship between Alhassan Saeed and Kofi Wayo turned sour since them, with the latter blaming the former for the predicament of his party which remained a controversial grouping, saddled with petty wrangling and eventually disappearing from the political plane.