Pressure is mounting on the District Chief Executive (DCE) for\u00a0Ekumfi in the central region, Ibrahim Dawson, to step down following accusations he unjustifiably caused the arrest of a teacher, Daniel Hammond, for allegedly insulting him.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hammond was arrested last week by the Police while teaching at a school in Otabanadze in the Central Region following a complaint by the DCE.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”c3leD07H7lCNviIworTSAJbqh0FVw49O”]He was subsequently remanded in prison custody for a week but was released on Friday before the one-week elapsed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Citi News<\/strong>, the Country Head of the Progressive Youth for Africa, a Civil Society Group, Wisdom Festus Foli, condemned the actions of the DCE and justified calls for his resignation.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople in power just think they can abuse power. They are abusing the man\u2019s rights which is not supposed to be so. We are demanding justice. He should step down,\u201d he firmly stated.<\/p>\n According to Mr. Foli, a\u00a0DCE has no business abusing the rights of individuals working under him because “his work is not to abuse somebody’s rights. That is not his function there.”<\/p>\n The teacher\u2019s\u00a0\u2018crime\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n The teacher, who is a former Presiding Member of the Ekumfi District Assembly, told Citi News\u00a0that his supposed crime was that, he notified the DCE of some discrepancies in the President\u2019s \u2018Accounting to the\u00a0People\u2019 address regarding some construction work at Ekumfi-Esuehyia, also in the Central Region.<\/p>\n \u201cSo as a former presiding member of the assembly, I thought it wise to inform my DCE and the only thing I heard from my DCE was \u2018how does it concern you?\u2019 in a very harsh way,\u201d Mr. Hammond recounted.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in the class room teaching and I saw two police men approaching the school. The whole thing was that my DCE had reported me to police that I had insulted him so I should go to the police station with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Teacher\u2019s arrest politically motivated?<\/p>\n One of Hammond\u2019s colleague teachers; Ebenezer Anim Spio, told Citi News the arrest was politically motivated. \u201cI am a colleague teacher and a friend so I came to sympathize with him because I believe what has happened to him can happen to me. We are all politically active and you don\u2019t know when such a thing can happen to you. We all know that this is politically motivated and we know where it\u2019s coming from, who\u2019s doing it and why he\u2019s doing it. But what we can say is that, it will backfire. They say he should come to court on Tuesday and we will be there to support him with our lawyer and we will see where it ends. If sending a text to somebody is an assault and can land him in prison then the law must be clearer. We want a better interpretation as to why a teacher teaching in the classroom should be arrested just because he has insulted somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cThis is clear power play because he was the former PM, and then something happened between the same powers and he was demoted and removed from office and somebody else has come to take the place so obviously there is power play; and then the undercurrent tension for this whole thing is politics although it\u2019s within the same party.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pressure is mounting on the District Chief Executive (DCE) for\u00a0Ekumfi in the central region, Ibrahim Dawson, to step down following accusations he unjustifiably caused the arrest of a teacher, Daniel Hammond, for allegedly insulting him. Mr. Hammond was arrested last week by the Police while teaching at a school in Otabanadze in the Central Region […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n