…The retraction, the
Apology & the smoking gun
“…You can take your job, I don't care, I am a Ghanaian you can't take away my Ghanaian citizenship... I am a Ghanaian I don’t need you or your job to survive…”
Dead men they say don’t talk. Prof John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills is not alive to clear the air on the raging controversy on what led to the ousting of former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin Alamisi Amidu from his government.
However, I am wondering if my friend, brother and mentor, Hon Martin Amidu will deny ever uttering the above excerpts or ‘something to that effect’ before His Excellency the late President Mills in that crucial meeting on that fateful day in January 2012 at the Osu Castle, in the presence of privileged high ranking government officials.
“Something to that effect” because, Martin Amidu, the legal luminary that he is, in his recent epistle to former National Security Coordinator, Larry Gbevlo Lartey cautioned him and indeed, all of us who were not physically present at that crucial 13th January 2012 meeting, but want our comments on the matter to be the truth.
“He (Gbevlo Lartey) cannot, therefore, be talking of what really took place at that meeting from personal knowledge but from hearsay.” Amidu averred.
Strangely, almost three years after Mills’ demise and Martin Amidu’s dismissal from office, the former AG has told the world that he lost his job in government because he had advised the late President Mills to persuade Mrs Betty Mould Iddrisu (the former AG he Martin Amidu succeeded) to be used as prosecution witness in the criminal trial of Woyome in lieu of her not been prosecuted.
Perhaps, what the learned legal gem may have conveniently left out in his statement or possibly, didn’t want the world to know, was whether he (Martin Amidu), following his stated ‘misconduct’ or unruly behavior before the president and his subsequent dismissal, later regretted his actions?
This paper will today want Mr. Martin Amidu a.k.a Citizen Vigilante, to tell the whole world whether he subsequently wrote a letter of apology to the late President Mills, recanting all the unfortunate statements and recklessness he put out?
It is very important for my mentor, (He is my mentor because of his past high level of integrity which I revere) to speak to the two issues above, especially because he had lampooned Larry Gbevlo Lartey for his purported reliance on hearsay.
Also, it is important because my friend and brother, ‘Mr. Integrity’ in almost all his communications since January 2012 has never acknowledge these two events (at least as far as I am concern) and, this has been repeated in his recent piece to the former national security coordinator.
“Was Gbevlo-Lartey consulted when the President delegated the then Member of the Council of State and my senior brother, Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama on 18th January 2012 who invited me to his house with the demand from the President that I withdraw in writing my press statement of 12th January 2012 or be dismissed? I told Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama to convey to the President that I was ready for any eventuality and will not ever withdraw that truthful press statement. The next day, 19th January 2012 at 1 p. m I was handed a purported letter of termination of appointment with immediate effect only for a letter on the President's official green stationery to go to the press under the signature of John Martey Newman stating that I had been dismissed for misconduct…
Later, representatives of the Government alleged that my misconduct was that I had failed at the meeting to name the Ministers of State involved in the gargantuan crimes. That is when I wrote to the press and the public that I had named those Ministers in a report dated 6th January 2012 which the President had requested from me when I met him in New York on or about 15th December 2011, a copy of which I had addressed to the National Security Coordinator (for purely strategic and tactical reasons). I never classified the report for good reasons…
I made a press statement about Ministers of State involved in Gargantuan crimes. I also advised the President of my intention as the Attorney General to prosecute Woyome along with all his accomplices and to persuade the then Attorney General to be a witness or be prosecuted. I am then invited by a Member of the Council of State (incidentally Betty Mould-Iddrisu's husband) at the behest of the President and told to withdraw my press statement accusing members of the Government and its card bearing members who use the NDC as an insurance against prosecutions for crime. The next day the President true to his demand through Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama purports to dismiss me with immediate effect. Am I, therefore, wrong to contend that I was removed from office to prevent me from prosecuting the offending NDC Ministers and party members that raped the nation?”
Like in all his previous articles on this Woyome saga, Hon Martin Amidu, has expediently kept away from the world his ‘reprehensible and contemptible’ conduct towards a sitting president who appointed him. Amidu has continually and perhaps deliberately failed and or, refused to address the issue of ‘misconduct’ as government communication then stated. Mr. Martin Amidu has never admitted to being unruly and disrespectful to the late president Mills in all his narrations, but The al-hAJJ’s dependable sources close to the late president confirmed that, that was what formed the basis for the former AG’s removal from office and not the ‘so-called advice’, as also reiterated by Gbevlo Lartey.
Our independent investigations revealed that, in response to the late President’s request for him to drop names of ministers he claimed were deeply involved in the Woyome affair at the 13th January, 2012 meeting, Martin Amidu angrily retorted, to the face of the late President Mills, that he can find the names of such persons in a January 6, 2012 memo he submitted to him.
This didn’t go down well with the late president who insisted he (Martin Amidu) mentioned those names before his assembled colleague government officials or get fired to which; Martin Amidu burst out, raving“… You can take your job, I don't care, I am a Ghanaian you can't take away my Ghanaian citizenship... I am a Ghanaian I don’t need you or your job to survive…”
At which time the then Chief of Staff, Martey Newman and others shouted at Martin Amidu, telling him to know he was before the first gentleman of the land and Commander in Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces.
Even when his colleagues asked him to retract and apologize to the President for his unruly behavior, Martin Amidu won’t budge and won’t apologize either.
In the heat of the exchanges, Martin Amidu was matched out of the meeting and subsequently dismissed, albeit reluctantly (more on that soon).
The aL-hAJJ can authoritatively state therefore that assertions by Martin Alamisi Amidu, that he lost his position in the government of the late John Mills because he advised the late President to persuade Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu to be used as a prosecution witness in the criminal case against Woyome cannot be factual.
Information pieced together by this paper and corroborated by senior government officials who witnessed events that led to Mr. Martin Amidu’s dismissal confirms Lieutenant Colonel Larry Gbevlo-Lartey’s revelation, that the former AG’s claims are half-truth.
Firsthand accounts from high ranking personalities privy to circumstances that led to Martin Amidu, also known as ‘Citizen Vigilante’s dismissal, The aL-hAJJ has gathered, was as a result of misconduct, gross insubordination and total disrespect to the high office of the President.
Although the former AG has discounted this assertion, this paper gathered that, Mr Martin Amidu, at a meeting convened by the late former president on January 13, 2012, refused or was unable to validate allegations he earlier made that some top government officials of the Mills administration were neck-deep in the Woyome scandal, but rather went into tantrums, poking his fingers before the late president.
In the run up to that crucial meeting, Mr. Martin Amidu, then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, made public statements alleging key figures in the Mills’ government were orchestrating unjustifiable media attacks on him because they believed “my integrity and professionalism as a lawyer was a threat to the concealment of gargantuan crimes against the people of Ghana in which they might be implicated.”
A senior government official in the Mills administration narrated that when Martin Amidu made those serious allegations, the late Mills summoned him before some top government officials including then Chief of Staff, Henry Martey Newman, then Secretary to presidential, Bebaako Mensah, Benjamin Kumbuor and Betty Mould Iddrisu among others, to ‘drop’ names of government officials behind the Woyome-gate or risked being fired. He was subsequently sacked by president Mills albeit, reluctantly.
In spite of Martin Amidu’s ‘misconduct and gross disrespect’ for the high office of the President, Professor Mills, apparently due to his soft spot for the embattled Attorney General, was initially hesitant showing Martin the door way.
But, handlers of the late president were reported to have insisted he sacks the rebellious AG or risk planting a dangerous and bad precedence for other appointees in his government.
However, what has up until now remained a guarded top-secret between the two parties, (President Mills’ side and Martin Amidu himself) your authoritative aL-hAJJ can reveal today is that, Mr. Martin Amidu subsequently wrote a letter to the late President Mills, retracting the disparaging remarks he made and also, did unreservedly apologized to him before his demise on July 24, 2012.
The former AG last week stunned many Ghanaians when he revealed that he was booted out of office because he advised the Mills administration to persuade Betty Mould-Iddrisu, who authorized payment of GHC51m judgment debt to Woyome, to be used as a prosecution witness in the criminal case against Woyome.
Mr. Amidu’s claim was contained in a press release in reaction to the acquittal and discharge of businessman, Alfred Woyome of two counts of causing financial loss to the state and fraud by false pretense, by an Accra Fast Track High Court in the payment of the controversial GHC51m judgment debt.
“I had made it clear to the Mills/Mahama Government as its Attorney-General that no prosecution in the scam involving the over GH¢51 million will succeed by targeting Woyome alone without Waterville, Austro-Invest, Samuel Nerquaye-Tetteh, the Chief State Attorney whose spouse EOCO revealed had received Ghc400, 000 from Woyome while he was handling the case as an Attorney for the Government, and others. I had suggested that Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu should be persuaded to be a prosecution witness in lieu of prosecution. The Government disagreed, so I was removed from office,” he stated.
But Gbevlo-Lartey, who was present at the meeting that led to his sack, dismissed Mr. Amidu’s assertions “that is not a statement of fact for those who witnessed the episode that led to the firing of Martin.”
In a Facebook post on the wall of Samson Lardy Ayenini, host of Joy fm’s New File program, the former National Security coordinator said, “Samson Lardy, I can assure you that was not the case on the matter of the sack. Scandalized might be mild!”
