On June 23, 2011, an Accra High Court (Human Rights Division), presided over by Mr. Justice U.P. Dery, slapped a whopping GH¢500,000 damages on General Portfolio, publishers of The Chronicle, the editor, and the northern regional correspondent of The Chronicle in a libel suit brought by Prof. Kaku Sagary Nokoe, immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the University of Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale. In addition, the court ordered the defendants to pay GH¢10,000 in costs.
In a number of issues, The Chronicle had alleged impropriety on the part of the Vice-Chancellor for arranging to purchase a hostel built by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETfund) for use during the CAN 2008 tournament.
The Chronicle had stated that the original arrangement was for the property to revert to the UDS after the 2008 Cup of Nations, and that there was something untoward about the Vice-Chancellor arranging to buy a hostel that was the property of the university.
The court ruled in favour of the Vice-Chancellor. On Tuesday morning, while staff of The Chronicle had reported to produce the Wednesday issue of the paper, the Sheriff of the High Court, in the company of policemen, arrived at the premises of the newspaper and locked it up.
On the same day, the defendants filed a notice of appeal through their solicitor, Kweku Painstil, of Paintsil and Painstil, a firm of solicitors.
On Wednesday, the defendants went to court and succeeded in arguing that the procedure adopted in locking up the offices was wrong.
The High Court, consequently, ordered the re-opening of the offices of the newspaper, until the legal issues regarding a stay of execution and the appeal against the judgment were heard.
It has been a harrowing experience in the last three days. But The Chronicle takes solace in the fact that legal issues are part and parcel of our democratic dispensation.
We take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly to customers of our enterprise, who were denied their daily dose of The Chronicle for two consecutive days.
We have learnt a number of lessons in this debacle. We have learnt that just as it is important to get the front page story on time, it is equally binding to attend to legal matters on time. If we had begun the process of appeal and stay of execution earlier, we would not have got to this stage, where our offices were sealed.
We hope and pray that at the end of the day, all would end well. We are grateful to the many well-wishers who called in person and on the phone to sympathise with us, when the going got tough.
In this enterprise, life could sometimes be very brutish. But, it is the ability to surmount all these vicissitudes that divides the men from the boys.
Having survived these skirmishes, The Chronicle has vowed to ensure that we move forward by providing our readers with more critical issues founded on facts and figures. We are not going to allow one misfortune to becloud our sense of judgment and commitment towards the construction of a just and equitable society.
Once again, we thank all customers for standing by us through thick and thin.
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