Keep quiet if you have nothing new to say – Asare to Amidu

A US-based Ghanaian professor, Kwaku Asare has asked the immediate past Special Prosecutor of Ghana Martin Amidu to keep quiet if he has nothing new to tell Ghanaians regarding why he resigned from his post, other than what he has already stated in his letter to the president which he made public.

“If Martin Amidu has something to say he should say it. If he does not have anything to say he should enjoy his retirement.

“These threats to say things, if he is pushed, is not on,” Prof Asare said in a Facebook post on Thursday, November 19 in reaction to a caution thrown by Mr Amidu that government should not push him otherwise he will spew venom against the administration.

Mr Amidu has warned his attackers to stop forthwith or else he will defend himself, which may be “unpalatable” for the government.

In an interview with journalist Umaru Sanda on Thursday, November 19, Mr Amidu says he had resolved not to go to press with most of his grievances.

“Please, I have said since I left office that I was not going to give any press interview about my resignation,” he confessed.

“I was not going to talk to the press. I am being pushed by so-called responses to me, which contains reference…to speak. But I do not want anybody to blame me when I speak out and it becomes unpalatable.”

The first occupant of the Office of Special Prosecutor resigned his position on Monday, November 16, citing a number of reasons.

“The events of 12th November 2020 removed the only protection I had from the threats and plans directed at me for undertaking the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions anti-corruption assessment report and dictates that I resign as the Special Prosecutor immediately,” he had stated in his resignation letter to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

“I should not ordinarily be announcing my resignation to the public myself but the traumatic experience I went through from 20th October 2020 to 2nd November 2020 when I conveyed in a thirteen (13) page letter the conclusions and observations on the analysis of the risk of corruption and anti-corruption assessment on the Report On Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions and Other Matters Related Thereto to the President as Chairman of the National Security Council caution against not bringing my resignation as the Special Prosecutor with immediate to the notice of the Ghanaian public and the world.

“The reaction I received for daring to produce the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transactions anti-corruption report convinces me beyond any reasonable doubt that I was not intended to exercise any independence as the Special Prosecutor in the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and recovery of assets of corruption. My position as the Special Prosecutor has consequently become clearly untenable.”

But barely 24 hours after Mr Amidu’s resignation letter, the Presidency replied, denying ever interfering with the work of the Special Prosecutor.

“Your accusation of interference with your functions simply on account of the meeting the president held with you is perplexing,” Secretary to the President Nana Asante Bediatuo wrote in a nine-pager.

“In exercise of what you considered to be your powers under Act 959, you had voluntarily proceeded to produce the Agyapa Report.

“The president had no hand in your work. Without prompting from any quarter within the Executive. you delivered a letter purporting to be a copy of you report to the president.

“The purpose of presenting a copy of the Agyapa report to the president is decipherable from paragraph 32 of your letter to the president in which you indicated that you hoped the report will be ‘used to improve current and future legislative and executive actions to make corruption and corruption-related offences very high-risk enterprise in Ghana’.”

But in his latest comments on the issue, Mr Amidu has cautioned his detractors not to dare him to “speak out”.

“So, either the attacks stop or I will defend my integrity even if that means my death. It is something I won by dint of hard work from the PNDC to date and I am not going to allow anybody, not even the president, to pull that integrity into the mud.”