An Accra High Court has ordered publishers of the Daily Post newspaper and its editor, Michael Dokosi, to pay an amount of GHc 800,000 to the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) board Chairman, Hackman Owusu Agyeman.
The amount was awarded as damages for a defamatory publication against him.
[contextly_sidebar id=”eJzpjgibopKSriyyacmJ8c1ePr5Mr7jm”]The court made the order after it found them guilty of defaming Mr. Owusu Agyeman.
The court also asked the defendants to, within two weeks, retract the defamatory story and apologise on the front-page of the paper.
The former Minister of State Hackman Owusu Agyeman filed a GHc5 million suit against Giraffe Publications, publishers of the Daily Post newspaper and the Editor, Michael Dokosi, and one Haruna Mahama, for defamation for remarks by the Daily Post.
Mr. Dokosi and Mahama Haruna alleged that Mr. Owusu-Agyemang recorded and leaked a tape of a secret meeting between former President John Kufuor, some members of the clergy and some party elders at the former’s residence in Accra recently.
According to the publication, Mr. Owusu-Agyemang had been accused by Mahama Haruna of recording the meeting and leaking the story to embarrass former President and the clergy for saying things that will not inure to the sustenance of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and ensure that Nana Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the NPP, lost the 2016 elections.
Among the claims sought by Mr. Owusu-Agyeman were; “damage for libel in the sum of GHc 5 million, an order of perpetual injunction to restrain the Defendants, whether by themselves, their agents, servants, workmen, privies or any of them or otherwise from further writing, printing, publishing and/or causing to be written, printed and published the said words or similar statements defamatory of the plaintiff.”
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By: Fred Djabanor/citifmonline.com/Ghana