Accra, Jan 23, GNA- Mr Alexander Samuel Abbia-Kwakye, a former security guard at the Flagstaff House on Wednesday petitioned the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), sitting in Accra, for an increase in his monthly pension from the present 169,000 cedis. He told the Commission that at best his unlawful arrest and detention for nine months, following the military coup in 1966 that ousted Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP) reformed him into a more religious person who does not play with his church activities.

" Those hard experiences and prison life transformed me into a new creation. I've been a new creation since then. I don't play with my church activities anymore," Mr Abbia- Kwakye said when the Commission asked what impact torture and prison life had on him.

After his narration, the Most Revered Charles Palmer-Buckle, a member of the Commission wished Mr Abbia-Kwakye, who turned 72 on Wednesday, January 22, 2003, a belated happy birthday, with a prayer of long life and strength from God to carry on with the rest of his life.