Former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu has accused President Akufo-Addo of scheming to capture the National Security apparatus towards the agenda of getting the NPP to win the 2024 presidential and parliamentary election.
Mr. Amidu alleged that President Akufo-Addo’s constant refrain of handing over power to the NPP-led government after the 2024 election, points to this.
The former Special Prosecutor made this assertion in an opinion piece issued on Thursday.
This comes after President Akufo-Addo appointed the Deputy National Security Coordinator, Mr. Edward Asomani, to act as National Security Coordinator.
According to Mr. Amidu, the President’s desire to appoint friends and family members to key strategic positions demonstrates that he is abusing the law to advance his political agenda.
“He is determined to ensure that by the middle of his second term in office, all the instruments of law enforcement, state security and intelligence power of the Republic of Ghana should be led by persons with proven political dedication and loyalty to his person, and his family and friends,” part of the article read.
Explaining the basis of his contention, the Citizen Vigilante said, “The appointment by the President of Mr. Edward Asomani, Deputy National Security Co-ordinator, to act as National Security Co-ordinator, with effect from Monday, 8th August 2022 subject to the confirmation of his appointment, gives finality to Nana Akufo-Addo’s long game to capture the National Security Secretariat apparatus towards his electoral agenda for the 2024 parliamentary and presidential elections.”
He went on to say that “the groundwork to facilitate the accomplishment of the dreams of Nana Akufo-Addo to abuse the constitutional process through the appointing powers vested in him to load the institutions of state power responsible for impartial law enforcement, security and intelligence of the electoral process with the new leadership of the National Security apparatus, had already been laid during his first term in office as President when he captured the commanding heights of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization and its associated regulatory authorities and agencies responsible for information technology, and communications.”
“The biometric data of all citizens of voting age who use SIM cards as instruments of ICT are to be captured and stored in a database at the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) pursuant to the authority of the Minister and the National Communications Authority (NCA).
“It is imperative for citizens to remember that the Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Mr. Joseph Anokye, was purposefully brought or encouraged to return home to facilitate the winning of the 2016 elections by Nana Akufo-Addo and was duly rewarded with that appointment in January 2017.
“For those who do not know or remember: the Director-General of the National Information Technology Authority (NITA), Mr. Richard Okyere-Fosu, was a former group head of information technology at cousin Ken Ofori-Atta’s Data Bank Financial Services Limited who went along to the Ministry of Finance with Ken Ofori Atta and was later transitioned to NITA. First, as Director of Finance and Administration and subsequently elevated to lead the agency.”
He added that “and for those who understand the power of controlling voter’s and citizens’ biometric data and means of information technology communications during the 2024 elections the possibility of surveillance of political opponents could not have been far from the main reason for the insistence and railroading of Ghanaians on the Ghana Card registration, and the SIM Cards re-registration exercise using the unconstitutional and infamous process of the Establishment of Emergency Communications Instrument, 202 (E. I. 63).
Nana Akufo-Addo’s long game to use the instruments of state power disingenuous and opaquely to prepare an uneven electoral playing field in such a manner as to realize his fixation and paranoid of winning the 2024 elections, no matter what happens, is being gradually achieved,” he alleged.