By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 5, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Mr. Sam George Nettey's accusation has absolutely no basis in fact, logic and common sense (See "Sam George: Akufo-Addo Has Benefitted From Drug Barons..." Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/4/14). It is wholly based on innuendoes, rumors and hearsay which, were the accuser to be compelled to substantiate before a legitimately constituted court of law, Mr. Nettey could well be found to be liable for defaming the 2016 Presidential Candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

That the accusation is essentially and wholly tentative, means that it is predicated on sheer malice than any forensically sustainable evidence. For starters, Mr. Nettey claims that the strength and/or sources of his scandalous allegations are based on the public pronouncements of some political opponents and rivals of Nana Akufo-Addo among the rank-and-file membership of the New Patriotic Party. And so the certain implication here is that the accuser/defamer is surefire ready to name names and call his sources to mount the judicial stand/dock and testify in support of the accuser.

The accuser also claims that one Mr. David Kwadwo Anim, who owns Le Baron Hotel at East Legon, and who was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport a couple of months ago, "had been a chief financier of Nana Addo's campaign until his arrest."

On the latter score, Mr. Nettey has several questions to answer, including the question of what makes Mr. Anim "a chief financier" of the Akufo-Addo campaign; and also precisely how much money the accuser knows Mr. Anim to have contributed to the Akufo-Addo Presidential Campaign.

As well, Mr. Nettey needs to provide any forensically sustainable evidence pointing to Nana Akufo-Addo's having facilitated the alleged criminal activities of Mr. Anim's, in much the same manner that it has been clearly established beyond doubt that highly placed operatives in the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress government, and at the top-echelons of the security system at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), actively facilitated the trafficking out of the country by Ms. Nayele Ametefe (aka Ruby Adu-Gyamfi) some 12.5kgs of commercial-grade cocaine on or about Nov. 10, 2014.

The NDC's Mr. Nettey does not clarify whether, if, indeed, Mr. Anim, the allegedly arrested and convicted proprietor of Le Baron Hotel, contributed some motorbikes to the NPP campaign, that the public ought to envisage the NPP campaign to be synonymous with or the same as the Akufo-Addo campaign. And also how Mr. Nettey came to the conclusion that his alleged NPP "chief financier" has been forensically proven to have purchased the alleged motorbikes with money realized from illegal drug-trafficking. Then also, the accuser has to inform the Ghanaian public about the number of motorbikes donated by Mr. Anim to the Akufo-Addo presidential campaign.

It is also significant to observe here that Mr. Nettey has publicly attributed the source of his latter accusation to Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, the fire-spitting New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Assin-Central, in the Central Region. The fact of the matter is that even if it is objectively and clinically established that Ms. Ametefe was not a card-carrying member of the ruling National Democratic Congress, the incontrovertible fact still stands that the convicted cocaine-trafficking baroness could only have gained access to travel abroad through the Presidential Lounge at the Kotoka International Airport with the complicity of security personnel appointed by President John Dramani Mahama.

One thing that ought to be made crystal clear to Mr. Nettey and his ilk is that they cannot presume to facilely wish away the Ametefe Scandal by simply attempting to lamely claim that their main political opponents among the ranks of the membership of the New Patriotic Party had done the same under their watch, or have been linked to other notorious drug-traffickers. Even polemically assuming that, indeed, similar instances of security lapses and legal breaches had occurred under the watch of President John Agyekum-Kufuor and his New Patriotic Party government, would such unenviable precedents in of themselves legitimize Nayelegate?

And just why would Mr. Nettey have the Ametefe Cocaine Scandal swept under the rug, as it were, if the Mahama government was not hell-bent on maintaining illegal drug-trafficking as a major plank of its 2016 presidential campaign platform? But what decisively, and decidedly, gives away Mr. Nettey's rather pathetic assay at "criminal equalization" is his luridly hypothetical allegation that "Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is possibly the only Presidential Candidate who has benefitted from illicit drug proceeds since 1992."

In other words, the accuser is not even certain about the veracity of his claim. What is both intriguing and fascinating here, though, is the fact that in Nayelegate, the global community has become nauseatingly aware of Ghana's National Democratic Congress government as the illegal drug-trafficker's ideal patron and most trustworthy facilitator.