…Over Multi Billion Cedis Shady Deal

An exposure of a secret scheme to use the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) name to enrich private bank accounts has generated an infighting between some of the party’s leading officers.

The Party’s National Organiser, Lord Commey. has incurred the wrath of its (Party’s) Greater Accra Regional Chairman, Sammy Crabbe, who claims Lord Commey had foiled his money-making scheme.

Mr. Sammy Crabbe, who had been exposed for hiding behind SMSGH, a private company that outsources SMS applications, to organize a text poll for the 18 people who had expressed interest in contesting for the Party’s flagbearership position, in an interview with this paper, was very uncharitable towards his National Organiser.

He directly accused Lord Commey of deliberately destroying “basabasa” the entire plan, simply because of his desire for monetary gains in the venture. He insinuated that Lord Commey had a green eye over the profits which were expected to be around ¢80 billion.

Crabbe told this paper that this time around, to protect himself, he had instructed SMSGH to handle the scheme whiles he operated behind the scenes.

This paper gathered from SMSGH that the general public would be invited to participate in the poll by sending the names of the 18 aspirants through SMS text messages to a mobile short code that would be provided. At the end of each round, the aspirant with the least votes would be declared disqualified, evicted from the poll and considered to be rejected by the general public.

Each text message would attract a premium cost of ¢5000 or 50 GP and Ghanaians living in the Diaspora would also be allowed to participate in the text poll.

The Crusading GUIDE has gathered that neither the Party nor the aspirants were in support of the exercise as the proper monitoring could not be assured.

Some of the aspirants this paper spoke to said they were against the scheme and expressed fear that the process would not be transparent and the figures could be doctored to give the public a wrong impression about the performance of the aspirants.

They explained that votes from the Greater Accra Region were crucial and thus, they would not want to step on the toes of the Region’s Chairman by speaking publicly against him.

Meanwhile, Lord Commey, when contacted for his comment on the issue, said in as much as the said poll was a recipe for chaos and disaster for the party, it would be unfair to say he single handedly stood against it.

Lord Commey explained that the decision to challenge the said poll was agreed upon at a National Executive meeting which he attended and contributed to just like any other member.

This paper is also aware that Mr. Crabbe had directed that some journalists should be recruited to join him on his money making mission. The said journalists, some of whom had confirmed to this paper that they were indeed contacted by SMSGH on behalf of Crabbe, were promised some percentage of the profit.

Their duty was to publicize the concept and create public enthusiasm for it.

In a related development, Fortune Alimi, Editor of The Daily Guide newspaper, has disassociated his paper from what Sammy Crabbe and SMSGH were up to.

Alimi explained that though his paper was publicizing a similar poll, that had nothing to do with that of SMSGH.

He explained that the “NPP Presidential Aspirants Poll” being publicized by The Daily Guide is a transparent one where the results and how they are collated are open to the public. “That one is also eviction-free and no aspirant would be disqualified or considered to have been rejected by the public,” Alimi maintained