I've Not Forgiven Konadu

Malik Kweku Baako Jnr, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief of the Crusading Guide says he has not forgiven the former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings for sending him and a colleague journalist, Alhaji Haruna Atta to jail 10 years ago.

Mr. Baako said he was still hurt and bitter about the issue and explained that the circumstance under which they were jailed was totally unnecessary.

“I would be dishonest if I say I have succeeded in forgiving her, even though the new faith that I am now pursuing has given me a greater sense of discipline and a more open heart; so maybe I am on my way to forgiving her but I would be dishonest if I say I have forgiven her.

“But a new perspective is coming to me and a new spirit is in me so maybe I am on my way to forgiving; if I want to please the world, I would say I have forgiven her, but sometimes we say these things when we do not mean them,” Mr. Baako said on Peace FM Wednesday morning.

Mr. Baako and Alhaji Haruna Atta, on July 23, 1998, were sentenced to a 30-day jail term by an Accra High Court, following a suit filed against them by Nana Konadu, wife of then sitting President, Jerry John Rawlings.

Mr. Baako was then the Editor of the Guide, now , while Alhaji Haruna Atta was the Editor of the Statesman.

Mrs. Rawlings had dragged the two editors to court crying foul that their papers had defamed her, and sought an interim injunction to restrain them from publishing any further defamatory material about her.

In the course of the trial, she filed another contempt charge against the Editors and had the court throw them behind bars for 30 days each on the contempt charge, after which she failed to pursue the substantive case.

Mr. Baako said the one month jail term that Mrs. Rawlings made him serve under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government was more painful than the two years and six-month separate jail terms he served under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), also headed by J.J. Rawlings.

“I had done two years; I had done six months; so one month was no problem to me at all but why I was hurt and bitter was because of the circumstances; the whole thing was completely unnecessary and it was bad publicity for the First Lady, for the NDC, for the government and for everybody; it was an unnecessary bad publicity.

“The issue was more of a family feud and I was thrown in; I was a victim of cross-fire and that was unnecessary. Two years under the PNDC was not as painful as one month under the NDC, jailed by a court of competent jurisdiction, criminalized and made an ex-convict for nothing at all,” Mr. Baako indicated.

Explaining what landed him in jail, he said Gokeh Nkrumah, son of Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah had written in the widely read West Africa magazine that Mrs. Rawlings had said that one of her sisters had betrayed their family by shifting from the Nkrumaist tradition to another political ideology.

He said meanwhile one of Mrs. Rawlings' sisters, Nana Yaa Agyeman was married to Alhaji Haruna Atta, a journalist with a soft-spot for the Dankwa-Busia political ideology and checks revealed that the family of the two sisters did not belong to the Nkrumahist tradition.

Mr. Baako said Haruna Atta therefore put out the inconsistency in what Mrs. Rawlings was reported to have told the West Africa magazine and he, Baako, also carried a promo on the story.

“That was all! That was all the defamation she was alleging. If what Gokeh Nkrumah had written in the West Africa was not true, why did Mrs. Railings not send a rejoinder?

She did not, though West Africa by then had a wider circulation than the Guide and the Statesman; she did not appear to be worried about what was contained in West Africa.

Her worry was what was contained in the Statesman and in my opinion, Kweku Baako and the Guide were brought in to cover up something.

It is from that perspective that I look at the lady and say 'my God, can I forgive her'?” Mr. Baako remarked.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo