Rousing Welcome For Eric Amoateng

While may would have thought former jail bird Eric Amoateng will sneak into the country after completing a 10 year jail sentence yesterday at the CI Moshannon Valley prison in the USA, credible information reaching The aL-hAJJ indicates his party, the New Patriotic Party, is gearing up to give him a rousing welcome.

As reported in the January 14, 2014 edition of The aL-hAJJ that the NPP was spiritedly planning a rousing welcome for their jailed “cocaine hero”, the party is said not to have rescinded its decision on carrying him shoulder high.

Intelligence reports gathered by The aL-hAJJ suggest that the former NPP MP for Nkoranza North, Eric Amoateng, who was arrested in 2005 and sentenced in 2007 by a US court for trafficking 136 pounds of heroin valued at over $5 million, is expected in the country next week.

As part of arrangements which dates back last year when information was rife that the disgraced former MP would be released, his colleagues in the NPP are said to be firming up preparations to lay a “red carpet” for him.

Well-known for organizing such heroic welcome for their party folks anytime they have a brush with the law, the leadership of the NPP, according to an insider has fashioned-out a glorifying celebration to adore the “heroine-trafficker”, and praise him for a “good work”.

As if trafficking heroin and getting imprisoned for it has become a world class enviable achievement, the NPP, whose membership, particularly the leadership is yet to come clean of allegations of deeply immersed in illicit drug trade, are said to be brimming with smiles that at long last their ‘drug hero’ has been set free.

Just as the NPP, then in government and had the majority in Parliament failed to declare the Nkoranza North seat vacant on the face of overwhelming evidence showing Mr. Amoateng’s involvement in the 136 pounds heroin deal, all in the name of solidarity, many have said it is not surprising that the party intends to give him a heroic welcome.

“The kind of love and solidarity that was shown Ken Agyapong when he was released from police jail for declaring war and calling for the slaughtering of Ewes and Gas, and Ken Kuranchie after serving his 10 days sentence for criminal contempt, will be extended to Eric Amoateng, but his will be bigger than what we did to the duo,” a source told The Al-Hajj.

“Long before he was released yesterday, the plan has been that anytime he is allowed to come to Ghana, we will mass up at the airport in our numbers to welcome him and trust me that would not be all, we have planned something befitting for a hero like him” an NPP stalwart revealed.

The NPP stalwart, who pleaded for anonymity went on to brag that “the number of NPP supporters that will meet Amoateng at the airport would be a quintuple of the number of people that normally thronged the airport to welcome any of the national teams when they return home after making a good showing in a tournament.”

Back in his native Nkoranza, the leadership of the NPP in that part of the country are said to have arranged with some opinion elders to organize a colorful durbar to grace his entry into the town he once represented in Ghana’s law making House.

It would be recalled that the ex-Nkoranzah North MP was arrested on December 11, 2005 in the United State for trafficking heroin worth over $5 million dollars, and in a December 12, 2007 judgment, Mr Amoateng was sentenced to a 10-year jail term by Judge David G Tragger.

Ironically, whereas his incarceration became a monumental image denting episode in the eyes of the international community, his constituents, mainly members of the NPP held series of demonstrations chanting that irrespective of the illicit drug tag on him, they will forever regard him as their MP due to his philanthropic and benevolent activities.

In a sordid political decision which many said confirmed rumors that Mr Amoateng’s illicit drug money was meant to finance the NPP’s 2008 campaign, then President John Agyekum Kufuor was said to have thwarted investigations into the assets of Eric Amoateng and one Nii Okai Adjei, his accomplice, for the purposes of confiscating them to state in accordance with PNDC law 236.

In fact, the party made several fruitless attempts to bring Amoateng back to face trial in Ghana but the US officials, knowing the NPP for their manipulative and deceitful nature turned down their request and went ahead to make him face the law in the US.

But now that he is set to come home, NPP officials are marking time and waiting to absorb him back to their fold not as an ex-convict “but a celebrated hero”.