Hard-hitting critic of the Kufuor administration, Kofi Wayo, has sued the statesman for 20 million cedis. The cigar-chopping Wayo alias “Chuck” a member of the ruling NPP, is claiming 20 million cedis and a perpetual injunction against the paper to restrain it from further publication of defamatory matters about him.
In the suit filed for him by August and Associates, Wayo, was described in the statement of claim as an acknowledged businessman with vast business interests in the USA and parts of Europe and also an aggressive and celebrated national politician. The suit named Asare Otchere-Darko, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid and Kinesic Communications in the suit.
The offending piece, he claimed, was under the headline “Conman Wayo exposed” in the June, 2002 edition of the Statesman. This he claim was “not only highly and utterly defamatory, but also vicious and malicious and not only capable of destroying the plaintiff, both politically and his business career, but the said publication was intended without more within Ghana but outside countries.”
The statement of claim further averted that the “said publication has not only caused him, still causing him and will continue to cause him grievous political, economic and moral loss more particularly that the plaintiff is a politician and was a parliamentary candidate in the last elections and still nursing and preparing his political ambitions towards the next elections; and thus the publication in question is an effective and direct message to the whole world, the whole Ghana and particularly his constituents and his supporters in general, that he is “no good” and that they should forget about him.”
