 |
| PLOT TO KILL OBED |
| |
| Posted on: 2007-Feb-27 GNA |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
Dr. Yao Obed Asamoah, former Foreign Minister and Attorney-General, and currently founding member of the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), has said recent death threats on his life were without doubt, politically motivated.
Describing the move as a desperate mission by his political opponent, the septuagenarian, in an exclusive interview with Daily Guide yesterday, said he had no doubt in his mind that those behind the series of recent verbal and text message threats were sympathizers of his former political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
“They are threatening my life out of desperation. But the irony of it all is that the very people who wanted me out of the NDC and called me a confusionist are now developing goose pimples and feeling jittery of the DFP,” he said.
Obed, who said he had since reported the matter to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and other security agencies, said the latest one was from the user of Areeba number 024-6709522, warning him to desist from making any comments on the NDC founder, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, if he valued his life.
The message read: “Obed, when did you know that the NDC is a violent party? And you referred to JJ as a con man. I tell you that if you stand before people to campaign against the NDC you would die a painful death that you would never understand.”
Asked whether he did not think another political party could orchestrate such a move to smear the opposition NDC, he said; “I am taking the message on its face value, and it is clear to me from the content that certain NDC sympathisers are behind it.
I believe in the competence of the security people to handle the matter because criminals cannot have their day for ever.”
He said such threats had become so rampant that he found it necessary to report to the security agencies. He alleged that the faceless people went ahead to state that they would either kill him on his farm, in his house, or at Likpe, his hometown.
According to him, even though he was not the least frightened, he considered it serious in the face of the gruesome murder of Samuel Ennin, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), and its attendant text message threats on the lives of Kweku Baako, Egbert Faibille and Halifax Ansah Addo.
“The way that guy was killed in Kumasi had more to it than meets the eye. Those behind it were not mere armed robbers because they killed him without taking anything else.
Such things are dangerous for the unity and stability of our country,” he said, stressing that on-going developments had gone to buttress his worries all along that the struggle for power in 2008 would be acrimonious.
He said, never in his political career had he attacked the personality of his opponents, let alone made derogatory remarks against them, contending that it would be absurd for anyone to ask him to refrain from something he had never done in his life.
As to whether he still had the nerves to visit his village in the Likpe Traditional Area in the Volta Region, or any such place where he could be ambushed, he answered in the affirmative.
He, however, served notice to his political opponents to stop worrying their heads over the survival of DFP because the party was already airborne and could not be stopped from making its impact in the 2008 elections.
He described the action of the NDC sympathisers, who would not like to see him alive because they feared he might disagree with Rawlings’ views, as incongruous, and observed that thirteen long months after he had left them and found a more peaceful abode, he expected such people to have had their peace by now.
It would be recalled that in December 2005, Dr. Asamoah, then national chairman of the nation’s largest opposition party, and a number of national and regional executive members, were at a National Delegates Conference at Koforidua, forced to resign en-masse from NDC, to form DFP.
Before then, Asamoah was said to have expressed divergent opinions on Rawlings’ views on a number of issues, a situation many of the party’s faithful considered sacrilegious.
Weeks later, when the party converged on the EREDEC hotel for the congress, a group, later identified as the Azorka Boys of Tamale, armed with horsewhips, brutalized many who were in support of Asamoah.
It is not yet clear whether the former president still had any grudge against his longest serving and loyal minister, to have orchestrated the text message threats.
The last time they disagreed, Dr. Asamoah openly apologised and called for a reunion, but his former boss, in response to the olive branch, said he was praying for Asamoah’s soul.
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
| |
| |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Bookmark with: