Nana Agyenim Boateng, Founder and Chairman of the United Front Party (UFP), has commended Otumfuo Osei Tutu II for his intervention in the defamation suit brought against Bernard Antwi Boasiako, aka ‘Chairman Wontumi,’ the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Ashanti Regional Chairman, by Ibrahim Mahama.

Mr. Mahama, brother of President John Dramani Mahama, had sued Chairman Wontumi over defamation, demanding GH¢2 million.

According to him, Chairman Wontumi defamed him when he (Wontumi) was quoted in the media as saying that “President Mahama and his brother Ibrahim have loaded all the money into their pockets.”

Ibrahim further quoted Boasiako as positing, “Each and every day, they increase petrol prices and then you and I, the down trodden, suffer to pay for the increase – they keep the monies in their pockets and use them to buy aeroplanes in which they fly.”

Chairman Wontumi is also quoted as having said, “Each week, President Mahama and his brother Ibrahim travel to South Africa. You, my brother, the monies President Mahama has given to his brother have you got any? Does someone pay for your children’s school fees?”

In the writ filed at an Accra Fast Track High Court on behalf of Ibrahim Mahama by his lawyers, Gaisie Zwennes Hughes & Co., Mr. Mahama said Chairman Wontumi had made defamatory statements against him at a public gathering in Obuasi on March 30, this year.

Ibrahim, CEO of Engineers & Planners said, “The defamatory statements were made in a manner that was calculated to cause maximum damage and hurt his… reputation by causing him to be unanimously held in contempt and disdain throughout the nation; indeed the Defendant concluded his defamatory statements by letting out a clarion call for a people’s uprising to ‘replicate what happened in Tunisia.’”

He wants the court to declare the statement as false, malicious, defamatory and to order Chairman Wontumi’ to pay GH¢ 2,000,000 as damages.

The president’s brother also wants an order directed at Wontumi’ compelling him to publish a full and unqualified apology to him (Ibrahim) and retraction of the statements made in all the newspapers in which the defamatory statements were repeated.

Mr. Mahama also wants a declaration that the statements made by the NPP’s Ashanti Regional Chairman were false, malicious and defamatory.

However, Mr. Agyenim Boateng,popularly called ‘Gyataba’ was emphatic that Otumfuo’s call on Mr. Mahama during the Akwasidae festival to go and withdraw the case from court for amicable settlement was laudable.

He claimed that Otumfuo’s admonition to both parties to look for an amicable settlement was worthy of emulation.

“There are chiefs in other towns, villages and regions who do very little to solve issues among their subjects,” he noted, adding that other chiefs must take a cue from Otumfuo’s intervention.

Gyataba observed, “If every chief does that, there will be peace in the country.”