NPP Gun Caught In Dodgy Deal

… Prez. Aspirants Moan, MTN Cry Foul

The love of money is the root of all evil; so says the Holy Book and the Chairman of the New patriotic Party( NPP) in the Greater Accra Region, Mr. Sammy Crabbe, has been caught in the center of a dishonest ploy to use the party’s name to enrich private pockets.

Mr. Crabbe, a 44 year old ambitious politician, has also been exposed for attempting to induce some journalists to join him on his money making mission, at the peril of spelling doom and disaster for the NPP.

The NPP Chairman, in a quest to further enlarge his bank account has hidden behind Team Work Media Limited and SMSGH, a private company that outsources sms applications to dishonestly organize a poll for the 18 people who had shown an interest in contesting for the NPP presidential flagbearership for the 2008 general elections.

The poll, which has a main objective of making money for the organizers, would be known as the “NPP Presidential Aspirants Poll”. According to SMSGH, the general public will be invited to participate in the survey by voting for any one of the 18 aspirants through sms text messages to allocated mobile network short codes.

Each text message would cost the person sending the text an amount of Gp 50 or ¢5,000 and at the end of each round the aspirant with the least votes would be declared unqualified and evicted from the poll.

Crusading Guide’s investigations revealed that neither the party nor the aspirants are in support of the development. This paper learnt that last Tuesday, the NPP National Executive met on the issue and concluded that the project was a recipe for disaster and should be aborted immediately.

Meanwhile adverts on the project are already running in the media and the organizers have provided short codes for MTN and Kasapa networks to which the general public have been asked to send the name(s) of which of the aspirants would be the best person to lead the NPP to victory in 2008.

Interestingly, though the organizers had provided a short code of “1443” for MTN, this paper can reveal that the company did not issue out any such code to the organizers and was also completely unaware such an advert was running in the media.

The Corporate Service Executive for MTN, Mawena Dumor told the Crusading Guide that a couple of months ago SMSGH requested for a short code to be used for such a political poll. She said MTN, as a company, has a policy not to dabble in partisan politics so the request from SMSGH was refused, and the said policy clearly explained.

Crusading Guide has gathered that MTN has started an investigation into how the said short code got advertised in the papers for purpose of partisan politics. Meanwhile, Sammy Crabbe, in an interview with this paper, confirmed that he was behind the poll. He explained that in the early part of this year, he had attempted to organize the said poll for the aspirants but the plan was foiled “basabasa” by a member of the NPP National Executive (name withheld for now).

Mr. Crabbe said this time round, he decided to use SMSGH as a camouflage for the entire project and had directed the company to recruit some journalists who would be paid to manage public perception on the importance of the project. He said the journalists would enjoy some percentage of money made from the poll and they would be expected to generate public enthusiasm and interest for the program.

Crusading Guide has the names of three of such journalists who have confirmed they were contacted by SMSGH on behalf of Sammy Crabbe. The NPP Chairman explained further that after his initial attempt was foiled, he took the concept to one Johnny Toto who was quick to start the project and was advertising in the media.

As at the time of filing this story, 10 of the 18 aspirants had told this paper that they were completely unhappy about the project. They expressed fear that the SMS messages could be doctored to go against or favour some of them and this would form a wrong public perception about their performances. An attempt to get a few comments from the NPP General Secretary, Nana Ohene Ntow, on the issue surprisingly resulted in a dramatic anticlimax. When he was called to comment on the issue last Thursday September 20 2007, Nana Ohene Ntow said the reporter should meet him at the NPP headquarters on Saturday September 22, 2007 at 11:00 am.

On the said date and time the General Secretary said he was busy and called the reporter to his office around 12:40 pm. Nana Ohene Ntow then said the issue at stake was no issue and the Crusading Guide should rather focus on which aspirant had come to pick nomination forms.

The reporter pleaded he wanted to do the story and that since an interview had already been booked to that effect, the General Secretary should just explain the NPP’s position on the issue, especially when there were reports that the party had already met and taken a firm decision on it. Ohene Ntow then asked the reporter to sit down and write the questions he wanted to ask. Whiles the reporter was writing the questions, Ohene Ntow called Sammy Crabbe on his mobile phone and had a discussion with him in Ga.

The General Secretary was still talking to Mr. Crabbe when the reporter handed the questions to him. Nana Ohene Ntow after reading the questions suddenly became very furious and angrily told the reporter that the interview had been cancelled. He started to raise his voice, ordering the reporter to leave his office and threatening that the Crusading Guide reporter was provoking him and that he was no more in the mood to discuss the issue.

The reporter apologized and calmly left the office.

Please stay tuned for more interesting revelations on the story.