-Minority Fingers Akufo-Addo Over Attempt on Speaker Bagbin
The Minority in Parliament has warned it will hold President Akufo-Addo and his government responsible should the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Bagbin suffer any harmful security breach.
This attempt at leaving the Speaker “wide open” is coming in the heels of investigations by Whatsup News revealing that the Speaker is suspecting a hit on his person by a potential assassin, and had late last year tightened his security and had also asked his security agents to undergo some tactical training at the military training camp at Asutuary.
It is unclear who may have a hit on the Speaker, but speculations picked up by Whatsup News indicates that it could be either of two things; the Speaker’s uncompromising stance to support the controversial legislation to criminalise homosexuality or an attempt to give the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) an upper hand in Parliament, given the fact that the law-making chamber is currently a Hung Parliament with both the governing NPP and opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) having equal number of seats, while the Speaker is a member of the NDC.
Amidst all these suspected threats to the Speaker, the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), to which the President is the Commander in Chief, had witlessly written to the Speaker to withdraw four of his trusted security details “with immediate effect”.
The Chief of Staff of the GAF, Major General NP Andoh in the questionable letter sent to the Speaker on January 11, 2022, hardly gave the Speaker any room to reorganise himself as he [Major-General] Andoh ordered that the Speaker surrenders his trusted security officers within three days (January 14, 2022).
The GAF claimed the security officers were assigned to the Speaker “without the proper procedure”.
However, that excuse flies in the face of the available evidence, because a year ago (January 21, 2021) the Speaker wrote to the Army Chief of Staff through the Clerk of Parliament in a letter referenced PS/CS/112/27, to request for specifically named army officers to serve as his security details.
The permission was granted by the Chief of Staff of the GAF and the four officers have been protecting the Speaker for exactly one year now.
It, therefore, contradicts the GAF’s excuse for withdrawing the officers that the proper procedure was not adhered to in assigning these security officers. Critics have wondered why it took GAF a full year before realising the alleged breach of procedures.
This has reinforced fears that the top hierarchy of GAF which is believed to have been packed with loyalists of the NPP and President Akufo Addo are involved in a conspiracy to cause harm to the Speaker whose presence puts the NPP at a disadvantage in Parliament.
A statement signed by Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrissu said if anything untoward happens to the Speaker after the withdrawal of the security details, the President and his government would be responsible.
“…the minority shall hold the government of President Akufo Addo responsible should the security of Rt. Hon Alban Bagbin, the speaker of Parliament be compromised in any way,” the Minority Leader wrote.
The statement from the Minority reinforced the notion that the withdrawal was politically motivated.
“If the action of the military high command is in good faith, the irregularity in relation to the attachment could be rectified without necessarily having to withdraw the personnel,” the Minority’s statement said.
It pointed out that the letter from the military had not explained the nature of the error in the deployment, saying the omission was so because there really was no error because in respect of the deployment the Clerk of Parliament had duly written to the Chief of Staff to ask for deployment.
“The only logical conclusion a reasonable mind would draw with respect to the failure of government to indicate the nature of the procedure supposedly breached by Mr. Speaker’s outfit is that proper procedure was followed for which reason the military high command had no difficulty attaching the military personnel in question to his office,” Haruna Iddrisu wrote.