Capt. Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey (rtd), Deputy Minister Designate for the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, on Thursday said he was performing a duty to his client when he defended Corporal Foday Sankoh, the Sierra Leonean Rebel Leader.
He said as a lawyer he swore an oath to discharge his duty to his clients, which he carried out when Corp. Sankoh's wife approached him from the United States to defend her husband but said now as a Member of Parliament he could not continue to perform that duty.
Capt. Effah-Dartey said this when he appeared before the parliamentary appointments committee. He was earlier nominated as the Deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
He said little is known about Sankoh but regrettably the international media had misrepresented him in a bad light since he had not asked anybody to be molested or mishandled as is been peddled around.
On allegations of molestation at the National Investigations Committee of which he said he was a member secretary during Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) era, Capt. Effah-Dartey said he was the most senior army officer among the military men there but said he never saw any witness being manhandled.
He said he, however, heard that occasionally some bodyguards manhandled witnesses and any time such information got to him the men were disciplined.
Capt. Effah-Dartey said if there were rumours of torture of witnesses, especially by him, then such rumours were misleading since he has never been a chairman of the committee and personally never saw any witness being slapped or tortured.
He was reminded that the Ghana Bar Association protested against his nomination as Deputy Attorney General because of his non-belief in human rights activities.
He said that since he was detained in prison for 93 days at the age of 26 without any just cause, he has realised the need to champion human rights issues especially as a lawyer and a politician.
Capt. Effah-Dartey said all proceedings of the NIC were secretly recorded to ensure fairness and for posterity and denied that a gun was ever pointed at witnesses before the committee's sittings.
He said the concept of district assemblies generating their own local revenue was necessary adding that there was the need to encourage local initiative instead of over depending on the Common Fund for development.
On the menace posed by Fulani herdsmen, he said it is not advisable to allow cattle to move across farmlands, saying measures need to be taken to look at how animals are reared and to zone areas for their grazing to protect food crops and the environment for posterity.
