Plot To Assassinate Rawlings & Co.

A member of the Ghana Armed Forces, Sgt. Albert Akoto is seething with anger over alleged inhuman treatment meted out to him by some senior personnel in the army because off his perceived loyalty to the current government.

The sergeant in an interview with the Daily Post newspaper accused some senior personnel of the Ghana army of trying to sabotage the current government by harassing junior officers deemed to be supportive of the Mills administration. But what may be of serious consequences to the nation is his revelation that in 2000, he and some of his colleagues were recruited by some of these senior army officers to assassinate the then President Rawlings and some other leading figures in the country if the NDC lost the December 2000 elections.

According to him, those earmarked for assassination included Capt (rtd) Tsaikata, Mr. Kofi Totobi Quakyi, Lt. Gen Arnold Quainoo, Peter Nanfuri, the late Togbe Adzatekpor, Mr. Kwamena Ahwoi and Mr. Ato Ahwoi. He said though some of them secretly planned to scuttle the operations, it did not come on anyway because the NPP won the election and Jerry Rawlings handed over power peacefully to J. A. Kufuor.

According to Sgt. Akoto, to ensure that this heinous plot never leaks out, those who were hired to undertake the operation have been systematically murdered by the architects (of the operation). He said the bodyguard of the ex-CDS, Lt Gen. J. B Danquah was one of the people murdered by the architects of the assassination plot to shut his mouth. Sgt Akoto catalogues a series of illegal activities going on in the Ghana Army, especially against the junior officers and cautioned the Mills government to sit up and listen to the murmurings of these junior officers or blame themselves for whatever may happen later.

He also touched on a group of soldiers who the NPP gave huge sums of money to quit the army after the party lost the 2008 elections, explaining that it is these well-trained soldiers that the NPP is using to visit mayhem in the north to ensure that the Bawku crises and others never end.

He vindicated Rawlings' assertion that the NPP was behind the sudden rise in the spate of armed robberies in the country, stressing that the ex-soldiers were being used to create an atmosphere of insecurity in the army. Sgt. Akoto who was involved in a fatal accident in Liberia during peace keeping operations, told the Daily Post that he was locked up by the commander of his Unit, the 48 Engineers Regiment, for not being able to perform guarded duties though he had been given permission by doctors to rest for a while.

The aggrieved solder narrated how he was attacked in the night by some colleague soldiers and bundled out of his house at Teshie on the orders of Lt. Col. Ofori. Sgt Akoto is currently homeless. He said he has tried without success to see President Mills to intervene on his behalf after trying without success to get some high-ups in the military and in the government to intervene in the matter.