A former Attorney General Martin Amidu has revealed that he was asked to write the apology to former President John Mills over his outburst when he intended to pursue some government officials he believed were involved in corrupt practices.
He made this revelation in response to a publication by the Al Hajj newspaper on Thursday.
[contextly_sidebar id=”TrlFnjEz8XSf3XzJYZIxdh2pTG1MyPYL”]The newspaper reported that Mr Amidu is yet to come to terms with what could have prompted the late President to fire him after he had subsequently and unreservedly apologized for his earlier unruly behaviour.
According to the paper, Mr. Amidu was handed a dismissal letter only a day after he finally caved in and delivered an apology letter to the late President Mills after persistenly refusing over a five year period to show remorse for misconducting himself.
Mr Amidu in a sharp rebuttal on the Citi Breakfast Show however pointed out that the former Chairman of the Council of State, Kofi Awoonor asked him to write an apology to the President though he had earlier rendered a verbal one to the President.
“That letter was written because two senior elders I have worked with from PNDC to NDC all through asked me to give them that letter to be sent to the President,” he told Citi Breakfast Show Host, Bernard Avle.
Amidu revealed that Kofi Awoonor called him to his house and told him “they[Kofi Awoonor and Captain Tsikata have discussed and come to the conclusion that eventhough” he rendred a verbal apology to the President, they think as young man he should give them a note to send to the President and leave the rest to them.
He said he had earlier declined to write the letter since “that was against my better judgement.”
“It is Ghanaian culture that when a young man has a misunderstanding with somebody older than him, even he is right, elders will not tell him in the presence of other people that he is right. The younger ones is asked to apologise.It is only in the absence of the other one that they tell the elder one”
He however stated that he finally agreed to send a written apology to the President after Kofi Awoonor insisted.
“I went to my office, drafted a letter, gave it to my Secretary Patricia Achana who still works in the Attorney General’s Office.She carried the draft letter to Kofi Awoonor.Captain Tsikata’s name was not included so Kofi Awoonor asked me to include Captain Tsikata’s name and then gives the letter back to my secretary and calls me and says since the matter was discussed between him and Captain I should not leave his name alone, I should include Captain Tsikata’s name. So the letter is brought, I sign it and then she delivers it back to Kofi Awoonor that very morning.”
Martin Amidu was sacked in 2012 after reportedly alleging that some key persons in government had ochestrated unwarranted media attacks on him because they believed his :”integrity and professionalism as a lawyer was a threat to the concealment of gargantuan crimes against the people of Ghana in which they might be implicated.”
Full interview between Citi Breakfast Show host Bernard Avle and Martin Amidu:
AVLE: So I don’t know if you’ve seen the full story, what is your comment to what “The Alhaj”
AMIDU: Good, what I said the other time was that if Alhaji was not a government appointee, he is not supposed to be privy to correspondence between me and the president and that if the government thought that it wanted to make capital out of it, he should have whatever letter it has published, then I will respond. And the public can then know the whole fact and decide who is right and who is not. But now I’m informed that even though Alhaji Bature is not a member of government and has never held a position in government the letter he has published bears the president’s office stamp of 18th January 2012. Am I right?
BENARD: Yes
AMIDU: Which means that the letter was given to Alhaji Bature by somebody in the former president’s office or in the current president’s office. Therefore I have the right to respond to it now that I have been assured that the presidency is the first to put that letter in the public domain. And I would want to explain the circumstances surrounding that supposed apology letter. First and foremost let me say that Alhaji Bature himself has published, I think last week that I had told the former president I had resigned and would not serve him again. Meaning that I was the first person to offer my resignation and tell the president as a Ghanaian; a citizen of Ghana I couldn’t be compelled to work for a person who had breached trust with me. So I wouldn’t serve him again. So I was ready to go and I had said I will submit my resignation letter to him one hour after I left the office, until they decided that no, the meeting has not concluded, we should meet again at three o’clock. And as I’ve explained already how I went back to the meeting and Captain Tsikata came gave me assurance and asked me to continue doing my work. So that is where it is. And I’ve explained that as for the President dismissing you, when you offer that you are resigning and then somehow they get you to stay on and dismiss you, it’s like dying from Malaria or stomach ache or some pandemic. It doesn’t make a difference, all is the same death. Because if you were going away and they didn’t allow you to go, because you thought that the way they were treating affairs in government were not ticking and they decide to send you home, why will you be peeved if already you wanted to go? So that is the short answer to the fact that I was peeved.
But you see Bernard, if God had not been blessful to Ghanaians by pushing the hawks to push the former President to sack me, how would we ever have been able to go and collect the judgment we had. By virtue of that act, Ghana has profited. There is no way as an Attorney General I would have been allowed to do what I did. It was because I was removed; nobody could then control me, or stop me. So I went to the Supreme Court and collected the judgment. And you remember that even the President was the 5th defendant. It is his death which prevented the court from making a pronouncement on his culpability within the whole Woyome saga. So to say that I am aggrieved is not here or there, you know. Let’s come to the issue which has generated all this. I never said that it is because I suggested that Betty should be persuaded to give evidence or be prosecuted that is why I was supposedly dismissed. What I said was I had advised government to prosecute all those involved in the Woyome scam and the next sentence was I had suggested that Betty should be persuaded so it is the whole paragraph which should be looked at but to isolate Betty and because I said she should be persuaded to be a witness or to be prosecuted, that is not the reason. In any case my advice to the president was to prosecute everybody involved which he was reluctant to do. He himself had said on Gold Fm on 22nd of December that those who created the debt are those who are culpable for Woyome is that not so. I disagreed and I insisted. let me deal with the whole totality of the matter. As I have indicated I indeed advised the president when he was alive. In my last statement about the deputy attorney general, the current one, scandalizing the court, I attach “Amidu’s Perspective on the nolle prosequi in the Woyome case”, those of you who read it will see that on the 11th of June 2012 when Prof Mills was alive I stated in a feature article which is on Ghana Web; that “I had demanded as Attorney General and continue to advocate as a citizen of Ghana for the retrieval of 51 million plus Cedis involved in the gargantuan fraud and the prosecution of the perpetrators of the fraud on the Republic of Ghana. The name Alfred Agbesi Woyome came to symbolize the suspected fraud as a symbolic problem that needed to be dealt with in accordance with the due process of law in the hope of preventing any future recurrence. Mr. Woyome as a person was not the problem. The problem was and is the system and method used to commit such suspected fraud on the Republic. In my respectful view, to isolate Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome alone for prosecution smacks of personalizing the problem, selective justice, inequity and portraying him as a sacrificial lamb.” This I wrote on 11th June 2012. Professor Mills was alive. The Gbevlo Lartey Alhaji Bature is quoting was National Security Adviser.
No one challenged me that I did not advise Professor Mills. So it is not like it is because he is dead. When he was alive, I continued out of office saying I had advised him. He had all the opportunity to deny, his ministers had the opportunity to deny, his Chief of Staff had the opportunity to deny, his National security coordinator had the opportunity to deny. They didn’t. And I have repeated that in my response to the Lithur Brew & Co or one of those things. So why will anyone call me a liar when there is this documentary evidence in the media which shows my consistency in this matter. If you also want more information to show that I had insisted on the prosecution of everybody, please, anybody who is interested, I wrote an article on 30th May, 2012 which was published on Ghanaweb: Dare me and I will expose you; Amidu to Mills. In that article, I reiterated the position that all the accused persons deeply involved should be prosecuted. Prof was alive, he didn’t contradict me. None of his security people contradicted me. Nobody said anything. So why is it that when I’m repeating something I said during his lifetime and he said nothing and his officers said nothing, now one of them comes out to say I’m lying. That is why I said he is an opportunist par excellence. What I’m trying to say is that the issue which generated problem, there is factual evidence to show I have been consistent that we should prosecute them. There is also an attachment to the article last week in which I published the letter I wrote to the Attorney General on the use of the Chief Director as a witness. I repeated that the Attorney General’s office was spoiling the case and that they were not using the proper witnesses. I gave a copy of that letter to that Gbevlo Lartey man. I have an email to him in June, 2013 in which I state all these things. Don’t let us flock a dead horse as if there is no evidence.
Bernard: Are you saying that the letter of apology you wrote was on the premise of assurances you got from Captain Kojo Tsikata and not necessarily because you…
Martin: I am coming to that. What I am trying to do is to say that look, don’t let us mix my statement that I had asked them to prosecute all those involved and I had suggested Betty should either be a Prosecution witness or be prosecuted with this whole lie of my dismissal because it is a different issue. I am saying that the money has been retrieved. Whether I was sacked or not, as far as I am concerned, it is unimportant because the sacking has helped the republic of Ghana to get a benefit from it. In any case, I have said that the High Court on 4th September, 2014 entered judgment in my favour. My being dismissed, whether I apologized is irrelevant. But I am going to answer that letter you are talking about. It is something I will never have wanted to respond to in the public domain and that is why I have avoided it even though at the beginning when I left office, I was so incensed that I thought everything should be published so I took my letter of supposed dismissal or termination and that apology letter and I gave to the editor of Public Agenda and asked him to put the two documents in the public domain so that we explain how it came that the letter was written. After about 3 months, they said that look, they didn’t think it was necessary. So I collected my thing back. So it is not like it is a document I am hiding. In any case, that document was written on the morning of 18th January, 2012. And this is how it came about. On the 17th of January, 2012, Capt Kojo Tsikata calls me and missed me. I returned the call. He asked me to call the Chairman of the Council of State, Kofi Awoonor. I called him. He says, Captain was with him at the time but he has left so let’s meet at 8 the next morning. The next morning, I’m going to his office, he calls me, I’m then at Legon gate and said he is home because we are neighbours. So I go back to his house. He tells me he and Captain have discussed and he is to meet the president that morning. And they have discussed and come to the conclusion that even though I might have made words of apology to the President on the 13th after the disagreement had simmered down, they think that as a young man and as the junior person within this whole scenario, I should give them a note to send to the president and leave the rest of the matter to them. I told Prof Kofi Awoonor that it was against my better judgment to do that. He said look, we have worked with you all this while, from PNDC, we know your integrity but you know that by custom, juniors never get right. It is we who can tell the president what is right. But you cannot. So I agreed.
I went to my office, drafted a letter, gave it to my Secretary Patricia Achana who still works in the Attorney General’s Office.She carried the draft letter to Kofi Awoonor.Captain Tsikata’s name was not included so Kofi Awoonor asked me to include Captain Tsikata’s name and then gives the letter back to my secretary and calls me and says since the matter was discussed between him and Captain I should not leave his name alone, I should include Captain Tsikata’s name. So the letter is brought, I sign it and then she delivers it back to Kofi Awoonor that very morning. Then at 11:21 at 11:21:24 am I receive an email from Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrissu saying that Alhaji says we need to meet contact him. So I replied he called am on my and I replied at 1:20:58. Because I hadn’t seen this by then Alhaji had called so I said I am on my way. It was when I got there that Alhaji then said the president had sent him to demand that I retract my press statement of the 12th of January, 2012.
Then I told him look, Alhaji I couldn’t get you to brief you earlier, because Captain Tsikata and Kofi Awoonor had called me the previous night and I had gone to see Kofi Awoonor and this was what transpired. If he thinks that because of the letter that I had given Kofi Awoonor he is now err on good grounds to demand that I retract it I am sorry I will not do it today I will not tell him if he wants he can fire me. These are the circumstances. Then the next day I was fired. So what I am saying is as a northerner, it is our culture and I know in general Ghanaian culture that when a young man has a misunderstanding with someone older than him or a grown up even if he is right elders will not tell in presence of the other parents that he is right.
The younger one is asked to apologize. Right, It is only in the absence of the younger one that they tell the elder that look what you did is not right. So when I was invited by Kofi Awoonor and he told me that this was what he and Captain had agreed and I finally agreed let me send the letter. It was approved by him. We delivered it to him. My understanding was that it was just in accordance to the Ghanaian Custom. That if even if I was right, whatever right I have, as long he is the President of Ghana he is older than me. It was my customarily right to render an apology and hoping that Captain Tsikata and Kofi Awoonor will be the people to let him know that what took place was not right. You see, and what really took place; what really annoyed me was that, having written a letter of 6 January to Prof, on the 13 he invites Betty Mould and I and wants me to say in the presence of Betty Mould that Betty Mould is the minister I am referring to in my letter, right. I have written to you a report a confidential report, indicating people; meanwhile Betty Mould is my elder brother’s wife and you know it, it is not that you do not know it. You invite me and you want me to say so that tomorrow the Northerners will say that is it; he said it in her face. So I just refused and kept quiet and told him read the letter and you see who your ministers are who are implicated. So it is not anything which I think it is wonderful. I don’t want to narrate the whole story, but I am just trying to let you know that the letter was written because two elderly persons I have worked with from PNDC to NDC and all through, asked me. I gave them that letter to be sent to the president, it didn’t even escape me that the letter could be used against me in the near future. But you see I will prefer to respect my elders I have respected all the years than to disrespect them. And I do not give a dime if anybody thinks that because I apologized I did something wrong but I know as a northerner and I know other southern tribes do. If you are young, even if you are right, you will be asked by elders to apologize. I have no regret for it and I am not sad that I was removed from office. Because if I wasn’t removed all this monies will have gone free of charge.
AVLE: All right
AMIDU: You know there were other things that I told Prof in the meeting which if I tell the public you know what wrongs were going on in Government. But I wouldn’t do that. Indeed I am talking about this apology letter because Kofi Awoonor unfortunately is dead so as of the two elders it is only Captain Tsikata who is alive. I am not going to wait so I will die and then this matter will hang or he may be demised and then when I say it they say I am lying. I am saying it today here and now since Bature has been able to publish that letter with the president`s office stamp that it was written at the behest of Kofi Awoonor and Captain Tsikata and I did respect them. I don’t think they did wrong because within the circumstances it was captain who spoke to me on the 13th and told me to go and do my job and gave me the assurances. You know I do not want to tell you what the assurance is. And he has been my mentor.
AVLE: Alright OK
AMIDU: He has been my mentor. So I do not regret it. You know? What I am interested in is that in the case of Professor Mills, in spite of the documentary evidence, they told lies that I waited for him to die before I’m raising the issue. I have given you evidence to show that that is not true. I raised the issue about prosecuting the Ministers and others involved in Woyome when he was alive. What I don’t want to happen is that tomorrow, somebody will say this one too is a lie. That is why I am mentioning Captain’s name because ever since then, he himself has told mutual friends of what happened. So that, if as an elder, he can come out and deny that he never persuaded me to send this letter, that will be alright. I will then know the people I’m dealing with. In any case, I myself, on the very 18th, the President asked me to withdraw my letter accusing his Ministers of gargantuan theft or be sacked. I refused. And then the next day, I was sacked. So is it because of the apology letter I was asked to leave or was it because of my refusal to withdraw? And the refusal to withdraw is the same as saying prosecute all your Ministers involved in gargantuan crimes. Is it not the same? So what is the quarrel? All I’m saying is that, if the government continues releasing official documents to people to publish, I will tell the truth. I will not be hampered. Nobody will blame me for talking.
Click on audio to listen to Martin Amidu
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By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah