Nana Akuffo Addo: From CIA operative to NPP Flagbearer

The NPP flag bearer William Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo is not a stranger to controversy, but a new exposé about the man who would be president by some very close confidants, offers a troubling insight into the inner workings of the character of the man who is vying for the presidency of Ghana. Perhaps this will be Nana’s swansong attempt to covet his lifelong ambition and he has spared no effort in signaling his willingness to descend to hell to pick up the presidency of Ghana if need be.

Most Ghanaians know Nana as the son of Mr. Edward Akuffo Addo an ex Chief Justice and ceremonial president of Ghana, who himself became a lawyer and NPP stalwart. Many may not know the real antecedents of the man who would be president. For the first time, sources very close to the failed NPP presidential aspirant have revealed that Nana Akuffo Addo followed a time honored tradition in his family (his maternal uncle JB Danquah is perhaps Ghana’s most well known CIA collaborator) of being the point man for the CIA and western intelligence between 1985 and 1998.
In 1979, after Afrifa was executed by the AFRC, Nana Akuffo Addo engaged in a well documented proxy fight with his widow over certain bank accounts Afrifa was alleged to have been holding on behalf of certain elements within the collaborator community. The court battle threatened to become nasty until cooler heads prevailed and the issue was settled out of court. During the PNDC regime, he used his law firm Akuffo Addo, Prempeh and Co and the public image as a human rights and democracy activist as a great cover in the beginning but then as time went on, there was a need to become more creative due to the complexities of the job and volumes of documents and information that needed to be sent to his paymasters to earn his considerable stipend. This stipend was said to be in the region of $250,000 per annum. As the need to devote more finance to the forces aligned to push out the then NDC government, he annexed the DHL franchise for Ghana together with his partner Lawyer Prempeh. This was the inexorable link he needed to both assure himself of adequate finance as well as the cover to do his covert operations without attracting attention from the much vaunted NDC security apparatus headed by Kofi Totobi Quakye. Incidentally, Nana Addo had and still has a very cordial relationship with the Tsikata clan, especially his friend Tsatsu with whom he prosecuted the famous Tuffuor case, so he innocuously did not attract attention by creating the impression that the business was simply a courier service. The NDC government at the time saw no danger but therein lay the problem. Nana Addo and his field operatives effectively used the DHL franchise to spirit sensitive information to several Western countries and succeeded in creating so much disaffection for the NDC, which took the government by surprise. Nana Addo and his covert operatives were responsible for all the information that the western governments used to refuse Ghana aid during the dying embers of the NDC administration prior to the elections of 2000. This was in line with the NPP’s avowed policy of making sure that the people’s suffering and discomfort was increased to such unbearable heights that a vote for the NPP was the obvious choice.

Fast forward 11 years on, Nana has made very serious overtures to his paymasters to renew the relationship. His recent stance on fiercely backing Ouattara during the ongoing crisis in Cote D’Ivoire was an attempt to prove himself to his western intelligence pals. He is well aware that a Ouattara presidency in the Ivorian capital will put at his disposal enormous resources to help him prosecute his campaign. There is also a strong hint that Nana Addo will persuade his friend Ouattara to help him undermine Ghana’s huge but fledgling oil industry which is situated very near the Ivorian border by sabotaging the smooth operation of the oil production, in order to create disaffection for the NDC government in the crucial western region. Of course the plan would be for Nana Addo to ride to the rescue of the oil industry like a white knight upon the assumption of an NPP government in 2013.

Mrs Haleema Asana Kabore,
Media Watch Research Associates
Additional information supplied by Paul K. Kaleku- Former Research Officer, Information Services Department, Ministry of Information (1992-2006) Tel-0245223212 [email protected]