Politics of Thursday, 2 December 2004

Source: Chronicle

Josiah Aryeh: from London with promise

Josiah Aryeh strolled into prominence as the successor to Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, the effervescent scribe, now a significant transporter and hotelier who smoothly operated the NDC war machine since its inception in 1992. That was the crowning glory of Dr. Aryeh who began his journey into political limelight at the editorial desk of The Ghanaian Democrat, and a budding career as a lecturer at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Accident prone, he stumbled on occasion at the University when he had problems controlling his voluptuous appetite, culminating in a spirited dash to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice by a female student at the University over alleged harassment. Chronicle learnt that, the intervention of the Dean of the Law School where he lectured, Mrs. Ekua Kuneyehia, saved his bacon when she moved to have the matter ?brought home?.

Aryeh, a gifted motor mouth, returned from studies in United Kingdom where he performed creditably and continued to do his doctoral work at the regarded School of the Oriental and Studies(SOAS). Even while a senior lecturer at the School, he showed signs of a freeloading spirit when in 2000, he was found to have binged on free electricity through a dubious connection at a house he was renting at East Legon.

This year he whined to The Chronicle that he was not getting money for his services, and had been cut off the supply line of goodies. It was this lust for the free things of life that finally led to his undoing when he committed the ultimate political sin.

Cross carpets for food.