NPP Gurus On Hit List

The top echelon of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is on high alert, apparently because there appears to be certain hitmen conscripted to take them on.

These heavily armed gunmen are said to be posing as armed robbers and have gone on rampage, assaulting mainly NPP top guns in the guise of armed robbery.

Nothing valuable was stolen in the attacks.

On Sunday night, Ken Ofori-Atta, former boss of Data Bank and a cousin of NPP flagbearer Nana Akufo-Addo, was attacked in his home by some armed men.

At the time, Mr Ofori-Atta was said to be with the younger brother of Nana Addo, Edward Akufo-Addo.

The armed men walked to the perplexed Mr Ofori-Atta, shot into the air and left. This display was not typical of armed robbery attacks, sources said.

Ken has reported the attack to the Cantonments Police Station.

Earlier, several other NPP members had encountered the strange phenomenon. Top on the list were Albert Kan-Dapaah, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, his deputy on the Committee, Former General Secretary of the NPP Nana Ohene Ntow and Communications Spokesperson of the NPP John Boadu.

None of them was physically assaulted.

In the case of Mr Kan Dapaah, his attackers, after vandalizing his vehicle, told him to go because he was a good man.

They took away laptop computer from Mr Agyemang-Manu.

“Our people should take warning,” Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, chairman of the NPP, told DAILY GUIDE on Monday, saying that he had also received several threats from unknown assailants. According to him, a possible connection with the NPP’s main opponent could not be ruled out, citing the incidence of the reported infiltration of the security services by ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) sympathizers as revealed in the Yaw Boateng-Gyan secret tape scandal.

“If the NDC accuses somebody of doing something, you should be careful because you are going to find out that that is what they intend to do. I saw in a paper last week, that I met with my national organizer and we have conspired that we are going to attack NPP lawyers and doctors and pass it off as it is the NDC. As soon as I saw that, I said our people should be very careful,” noted the NPP chairman.

“These are the sorts of threat that we have known from the beginning and we told our people from the very beginning to be prepared to pay the price,” said Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey.

Yaw Buaben-Asamoah, deputy communications director of the NPP, said he received threatening telephone calls from unknown callers after a press conference he held last week, when he alleged that President Mahama’s brother, Ibrahim Mahama, had unduly used official influence to secure a GH¢57 million loan from Merchant Bank without servicing the loan.

“The last time I went for a radio programme in the night, I had to be escorted home,” he told DAILY GUIDE.

“There is something out there, and the idea is to cow us. So if you look at the way they attacked Kan-Dapaah, it was a political attack, these are not your normal armed robbery.”

He thought the pattern was too well coordinated to be a random hit on NPP officials. “If it happened to one person, fine, but if it is a constant pattern, then it is made to intimidate. You realise that what they are trying to do is to break the spirit of the party.”

Mr. Buaben believed strongly that the attacks had NDC hands written all over them. “It can’t be some robbers who have met somewhere and decided to be terrorising only NPP people.”

Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE indicates that the flagbearer of the NPP may not have been spared by these threats. Sources say Nana Akufo-Addo has been forced to restructure his security arrangements to ward off any possible attempts on his life.