[ 2016-11-25 ]

Swear to prove I'm lying, Attah dares Nana
Ghana’s ambassador to Namibia and Botswana,
Haruna Attah, has dared the flag bearer of the
main opposition New Patriotic (NPP), Nana
Akufo-Addo, to swear on the Bible to prove he (Mr
Akufo-Addo) never had a discussion with him
(Haruna Attah) at which event he (Mr Akufo-Addo)
said the NPP would never allow a non-Akan to lead
the party into an election.

“What I put out there, I’m going to repeat in
another statement and I challenge the people I
mentioned to swear on the Holy Bible that they
didn’t interact with me,” Alhaji Attah dared
when he spoke to Moro Awudu on Thursday night on
Class91.3FM’s Inside Politics programme, in
response to numerous attacks on him following his
issuance of a statement on Wednesday in which he
accused Mr Akufo-Addo as well as NPP stalwarts
Hackman Owusu-Agyemang and Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor of
espousing anti-northern and anti-Muslim sentiments
against non-Akans and Muslims in the NPP.

“They must be running away from something, they
must be in denial. It’s something they are all
pretending not to know,” Alhaji Attah said in
reference to the attacks on him on social media
following his statement, adding that instead of
the NPP addressing the issues he raised, they were
rather hurling “insults” at him and peddling
“half-truths, innuendoes and spurious things
about me”, adding: “They are doing all sorts
of tangential things.”

In response to Alhaji Attah’s statement, the
Aliu Mahama Foundation came out to describe his
claim that the NPP sidelined and discriminated
against the late vice president as treacherous.
“This betrayal and backstabbing behaviour
exhibited by a senior member of the journalism
industry is irritating and backward,” it said.

According to Mr Attah, President John Mahama’s
recent assertion that the NPP only uses
northerners and dumps them is a truism. Parrying
criticism of the president’s comment from the
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), the
former NPP member who is now serving in the Mahama
administration said: “And if I may ask, what is
wrong with that?

“The president was only stating an obvious and
historical fact known to many people with a sound
knowledge of Ghana’s politics since
independence,” he added.

Describing Mr Mahama as a noble man who he must
defend, Mr Attah said: “After almost 20
presidential aspirants ran against late vice
president Alhaji Aliu Mahama in the NPP’s
presidential primaries in 2007 when Mr John Kufuor
was leaving office after serving two terms, Mr
Aliu Mahama “with much humility, conceded to
Nana Akufo-Addo who emerged winner, sort of…

“I do recollect very clearly, as if it happened
only yesterday, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
invited me to his office at Ridge near the offices
of the Electoral Commission. I honoured the
invitation, not knowing what to expect. The
outcome was one of the most revealing encounters I
have ever had with a Ghanaian politician. He
raised a number of issues and concluded on my
‘support’ for the late vice president. On
that, this is what he told me.

“The words have been indelibly etched on my
conscience: ‘Harruna, your support for Aliu was
flawed. If you think our party will cede its Akan
leadership, you are wrong.’ He went on to
expatiate on the theme, but with my mind reeling
at this blatant and brazen ethnocentricity,
nothing else really mattered to me again. When I
left, I confided in a few people, mainly family
and friends, as witnesses. I received all manner
of suggestions on how to handle this
‘bombshell’ and indeed one family member high
up in the NPP even suggested that I take it up
with President Kufuor. The frightening fundamental
message was clear: No non-Akan should dream of
leading the NPP as presidential candidate.

“Not only that, Mr Hackman Owusu Agyeman, going
beyond Nana Akufo-Addo’s ethnicity, used
religion as his anti-Aliu stance. He confronted me
in the presence of a witness: ‘Abdul-Rahman,
with a nation of about 70% Christians, do you
think it will be fair to have a Muslim
president?’ He was referring to Alhaji Aliu
Mahama, a Muslim. I answered calmly that in all
the major hotspots of the world, it is when some
groups think they are dominant and go on to
marginalise groups they regard as minorities that
the minorities also rise up to assert themselves,
by whatever means.

“Dr Addo-Kufuor, President Kufuor’s brother
had his turn too. At a funeral at the Trade Fair
Centre in Accra, he also railed against my
‘support’ for Aliu and threatened that: ‘You
are working yourself out of reckoning in any
future NPP government.’ I replied that history
would vindicate me. I could go on and on…”

However, the Aliu Mahama Foundation said on
Thursday that it “will like to put on record
that Alhaji Aliu Mahama never had any issue of
ethnocentrism against him or in his favour
throughout his public life until his passing.
There was never a situation where he was favoured
or discriminated against because of his ethnic
background.”

The Foundation said Alhaji Mahama’s
“competence and achievement speak volumes of the
quality of the man he was”, adding: “Alhaji
Aliu Mahama served this nation as the vice
president through the political party he was
affiliated to with dignity and utmost commitment.

“Alhaji Haruna Attah should respect the memory
of Alhaji Aliu Mahama not out of fear but because
it is the proper human thing to do. He should
allow the gentle soul of the late Alhaji Aliu
Mahama to rest in peace. The Foundation will not
like to be drawn into the politics and political
space by the kind of misrepresentation that some
section of the public finds convenient for
political gains.”

Also, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang has described the
claim as a “joke” while former Deputy Speaker
of Parliament, Prof Mike Ocquaye described it as
absolute “rubbish”.

Source - Classfmonline

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