Kwaku Annan’s £15million drumbeat of lies and our failure to tackle media tyranny

After a lifetime of swaggering and dissembling his way through one scandal after another on the strength of his prodigious mercenary skills — a potent mix of guile, ruthlessness, hubris and oratorical dexterity, it seems that the laws of gravity apply to Kwaku Annan after all.

Yes, it isn't news that Kwaku Annan is a total piece of journalistic failure and scumbag. Anyone who has followed the politics of Ghana knows this is fundamentally true.

Over the years, he has routinely been described as mendacious, irresponsible, reckless and lacking any coherent philosophy other than wanting to be a journalistic albino.

In fact, it is the central political fact of our era that Kweku Annan is more of a mercenary than media practitioner.

That, more than anything else, is what his recent flooding of the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories about the arrest of a prominent Ghanaian in the United Kingdom (UK) with some £15million impounded from him reminds us.

In what appears to be a calculated attempt to run certain individuals down, Kwaku Annan did not mention any specific name except to say the person is often times referred to as ‘Prime Minister’.

Hear him. "The person in question is often referred to as 'Prime Minister'. He initially carried $1.5 million on a chartered flight to London and when questioned upon his arrival, he said it was the proceeds of a certain contract which he was going to invest in London.

“He then took another £15 million pounds sterling to London, and now the money has been impounded.”

Kwaku Annan further claimed that the London Metropolitan Police then asked the said Ghanaian to provide proof of the contract that fetched him that money.

“He now has to fall on a ‘topmost’ official at the GRA (Ghana Revenue Authority) to help him with documentation, but the said officer said it had become impossible to do that.”

He added that the UK officials subsequently impounded the £15 million from the Ghanaian.

It’s important to recognise that when the matter of the £15million first came to light, it raised the specter of a politically motivated attrition or an effort to give a dog a bad name and hang it.

In particular, it raised the question of whether an individual can actually enter the UK with such a huge amount of cash.

And the answer turned out to be capital NO - Both the UK Financial Intelligence Unit and the UK Immigration previously the UK Border Agency have denied knowledge of the claim suggesting that £15 million has been impounded from an individual from Ghana.

I like to think that there is still too much of our folks ready either to support Kwaku Annan in every mendacity and his brand of clandestine journalistic enterprise - or treat him as some journalistic colossus who's holding the political class to account but now that the UK authorities have denied any knowledge of the London Metropolitan Police impounding £15 million from an unidentified Ghanaian, shouldn't Kwaku Annan be offering some sort of an apology for leading all of us on a wild goose chase?

As far as I’m concerned, in interrogating the full content of the video Kwaku Annan published, it gives an extraordinarily clear picture of him. He appears incapable of telling the difference between truth and falsehood - His approach has rarely been to double down on his lies or to delude himself for consistency’s sake into acting as if they were true. Rather, he recasts them to fit new information that comes to light, as if the truth were a fungible concept, no more solid than quicksand - He misleads, omits, obfuscates, blusters, deflects, and attack. That's precisely Kwaku Annan's blueprint for dealing with his mercenary brand of journalism.

What next? Kwaku Annan will publish more of the same old Lies, and the gullible section of the population will conclude he's serving the public interest?

We're talking about the typical, un-classy, purely puerile Kwaku Annan here. Of course he thinks he’s the

King of all he surveys. So, no apology. No acceptance of responsibility - No humility, no contrition, no ethics, zero insight, no regret, no common sense. Nothing, but overweening self-regard - No interest in reporting the facts but just a desperate desire to engage in media tyranny and follow the lunatic fringe ideologies that's threatening to ruin our politics.

No courage, either.
He didn’t dare face Anas Amereyaw Anas's Tiger Eye PI when he was confronted on tape demanding money to kill a story. He didn't dare face Kennedy Agyapong when he was sacked from Oman FM over ethical mishaps.

There is a kind of madness here. A man so patently unfit for any journalistic endeavour, somehow found himself in the media space, and he sullenly refused to be a constructive player in the public space of discourse analysis.

Why does such a hopeless failure with an improvisational and often distant relationship to the truth still hang around our media space?

I’ll just say that I, personally, think it’s extremely amusing that such a character finds himself in the business of information dissemination.

The sterling example of what journalists should do is to hold the powerful accountable by using and reporting facts, but then everything Kwaku Annan says is demonstrably untruth - Kwaku Annan really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his media hooliganism, and as we head into election 2024, any hope that Kwaku Annan and his rampant lying seemingly about anything and everything might retreat into history has clearly become wishful thinking.

This chap markets himself as a down-and-dirty fighter who champions the right causes through his refusal to play the game with kid gloves. In truth, he’s a sub-par pseudo journalist who’s not good at the actual journalistic profession.

There are absolutely shady players operating in the ecosystem of our media space, just as there are in any system with lots of money flying around.

But the question has to be how does this talentless entitled waste of space rise to the top of our public discourse?

There was an almost farcical accrual of embarrassing disclosures about how Kwaku Annan sometimes engages in "journalsitic blackmail"

He’s been found out on a number of occasions and sacked from previous journalism roles for making up stories - Kwaku Annan's many years in public life — as a reporter, columnist and editor have left a trail of witnesses to, and victims of, his slippery nature.

When he was a presenter of "Who watches the watchman", he lied to the owner of the station.

In a strange incident that he found hilarious but that epitomized his general lack of seriousness, he was caught on tape in 2020 demanding money from the "Tiger Eye PI" team to publish a false story.

To his critics, he's a liar and a fraud, and stories such as the £15million enterprise are taken as further evidence for their case.

I feel like more people should be pointing out the obvious to this media hooligan and dismal character that lies like this £15 million being impounded from a Ghanaian by the UK authorities are grandly shameless and blatantly ignoble.

And the sooner these conversations are started the better for us all.

Our nation has a lot to lose if some of our media commentators continue to squabble like ducks, and like cocks entertain the illusory thought that the sun will rise to hear them crow, when they are at their lows, and cannot throw the balls of snow at the crows.

I shall be back
Dela Coffie
The Writer is a media consultant and political activist