Akufo-Addo’s Gangster Gov’t Harasses Another Journalist Over False News Claims

The Akufo-Addo government has laid its gangster hands on another Ghanaian journalist for shedding light on the abuse that some indigenes of Ada in the Greater Accra region are suffering for standing up against the government’s handover of the Songor lagoon for a regime amigo to mine salt.

Noah Dameh, the Deputy Station Co-ordinator of the Community Radio Station, Radio Ada, is being harassed by the Tema Police for supposedly publishing false news about Mr. Daniel MacKorley, the owner of ElectroChem Company Limited which has been gifted the Songor lagoon by the government to mine for salt.

Daniel McKorley was a bankroller of Akufo-Addo’s campaign and is believed to have been handed several juicy state contracts, including the Songor lagoon salt mining deal and another deal at the Kotoka International Airport to another of his companies, McDan Aviation.

In respect of the Songor lagoon deal, the people of Ada have been up in arms and in response, McDan has been using gunmen and Police placed at his beck and call to terrorize the people.

One of the victims of the Police and McDan gunmen brutality is one Benjamin Anim, who after suffering bodily harm and being admitted to hospital, has allegedly been handcuffed to his bed for five weeks.

It was a commentary on these issues by Noah Dameh that led to the Police inviting him and charging him with the publication of false news.

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has expressed unhappiness over the development and asked the police to let the journalist be.

“The MFWA urges the Police in Tema to stop harassing Dameh for a Facebook post which is clearly of public interest. If the police want to establish that the journalist’s post is false, we expect them to respond publicly to the post and deny the allegations or explain the circumstances surrounding the hospitalisation of Anim and why he was handcuffed to a bed. We deplore the fact that Dameh was detained and subjected to criminal investigations in a jurisdiction where defamation is not a criminal offense. Such actions unnecessarily create public disaffection for the police and affect Ghana’s press freedom image,” MFWA fired.

Dameh’s ordeal follows a recent pattern of Police harassment of journalists and activists on cooked up “false news” charges, with the cases often abandoned along the way.