Within the leadership of the opposition National Democratic Congress, at least from Kokomlemle through Kuku Hill to Ridge, he is blamed for every conceivable woe that hits the party. Some even go as far as seeing him as the human barricade between the NDC and their ambitious march to the Castle.
Former President Jerry John Rawlings, if Victor Smith is to be believed, sees him as Nemesis Numero Uno.
His biggest charge so far is that he is allegedly encouraging the disintegration of the NDC, and supporting the formation of the Democratic Freedom Party.
And, confidential opinion polls commissioned by his outfit confirm the feeling that the NDC is losing support in their heartlands, such as the Volta Region, and the four Regions north of Ashanti.
Ironically, he is praised in all other quarters as the man who has coolly, surely and intelligently engineered the last five years of the record stability that Ghanaians are enjoying – a stability won even under the most provocative, liberalised political and social environment ever experienced in this country’s near fifty years of existence.
Until his in camera vetting last month, many Ghanaians did not even know how he looked like. His name is Francis Poku. He is the Minister of National Security, co-ordinating both internal and external security, with all the security forces of this country.
The counter-scheme, if the intelligence report picked up by The Statesman is anything to go by, is that some conspirators within the NDC have set out to ‘destroy’ Mr Poku.
The Palaver gave a little hint last week. The New Democrat, a paper virtually edited by the Special Aide to Mr Rawlings, Victor Smith, had the banner headline yesterday: FRANCIS POKU’S ¢5 BILLION SCHOOL.
The story was that the National Security Minister has been “exposed as the real owner of Jesus & Mary School, the ultra modern educational institution located at New Achimota.”
Our intelligence sources in the United Kingdom say the NDC have gone as far as tracking his barrister daughter in plush Kensington, West London, in their ‘search and destroy’ expedition in search of evidence that her house, which she acquired even before her father moved back to Accra after two decades of exile, was legitimately purchased.
That international search took them to Trassaco Valley, near East Legon, before settling on a property he acquired in 1976 at New Achimota, through the then State Housing Corporation.
This is the property that is the subject of the “¢5billion” story. Enquiries made by The Statesman confirm that the property is in fact jointly owned by Mr and Mrs Poku, a devout catholic couple. Though it was never subjected to a confiscation order, in the 1980s it was occupied by the militant CDRs before being turned into a school, African Child, and a church by ‘tenants.’
Mrs Isabella Poku, who before her flight into exile in 1982, was a teacher at Christ the King School, visited Ghana in 1995 to have the property released back to the London based couple.
In 2002, Mrs Poku, a graduate teacher with a degree from Hertfordshire University, quit her teaching job in North London and returned home to set up a nursery.
Bank records show that in July 2002, she took a short term loan of ¢300m to customise and furnish the school’s main building. This was repaid, according to records sighted by The Statesman, by August 2003. Since then Mrs Poku, the proprietor has contracted a total of ¢2.6bn from the same bank. By the end of May, 2006, the school still had an outstanding balance of ¢1.76bn to pay back to the First Atlantic Merchant bank.
That amount includes a medium term loan of ¢250m granted in May last year for work on another piece of land acquired for a primary school. The acquisition of that land itself was supported by another quarter of a million cedis credit facility from the same bank.
Is that not too much money for a single bank to advance to one client? A source at the bank told The Statesman, “We are in the business of making sensible investment with our shareholders’ money and in the process do our bit for the country’s socio-economic well-being. And, we are always happy to support good and reliable clients,” implying Jesus & Mary was one such client. Speaking to The Statesman back in March this year, the industrious Mrs Poku, who had invited the paper on a tour to the school, said apart from the primary school she intends, in the near future, to expand to the Junior Secondary School level.
“The putting up of a school is a noble venture,” admitted the New Democrat, “but Ghanaians would be interested in knowing where Francis Poku got the over $5 [sic] from to put up the school within 3 years.”
Perhaps, the figure $5m could be said to be the work of the printer’s devil – an inadvertent error. But, what seems certain is that schemers in the NDC are advertently set on taking out the man they see as standing in their way to the Osu Castle.
When contacted yesterday for his reaction to the New Democrat story, Mr Poku told The Statesman, “I am not going to lose focus by stories designed to achieve just that. The message I have for them is that I am more determined than ever to ensure the stability of this country. If the aim of such stories is to disturb my focus and attack the integrity of the system, then dare I assure the peddlers that their aim is counter-productive?”
With these words he moved to his desk to make a call about the situation of some salary negotiations with a group of public workers.
