Could Nepotism Have Influenced Kwame Anoff’s Decision?

The decision by the Board of Directors to fire the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) is perfectly in order and, in fact, could not have come much sooner. And so I don’t know upon just what basis the executive members of the Ghana Journalists’ Association (GJA) predicate their demand for the immediate recall or reinstatement, I suppose, of Dr. Kwame AkuffoAnoff-Ntow (See “GJA Calls for Recall of GBC Director-General; Appeals for NMC Intervention” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/19/18).

We know for a fact that the President of the GJA, Mr. AffailMonney, is both an executive employee of the state-owned and operated broadcast network and a trusted and collusive operative of the Mahama regime. And so his professional organization’s vehement call for the reinstatement of Dr. Anoff-Ntow could not be wholly dispassionate or entirely disinterested. He may very well be testing the resolve and authority of the Akufo-Addo government, particularly that of the Information Minister.

There are vested interests here, more so when Mr. Monney has an unenviable track-record of not forcefully defending employees of state-run media who fell afoul of powerful Mahama government operatives. On the latter count, of course, the obvious reference is to the young GBC radio reporter who was severely beaten by Mr. Stanislav X. Dogbe, the notorious Mahama Presidential Staffer, who was actually promoted for such gross misbehavior, despite vehement pleas by GJA operatives and members of the Ghanaian society at large for this criminal assailant to be disciplined. The victim would have his smashed up state-owned recording equipment replaced by Mr. Julius Debrah, the Chief-of-Staff of the Mahama Flagstaff House, with the open and sheepish complicity of Mr. Monney, but will not be significantly compensated for the brutal physical harm and pain caused by Mr. Dogbe.

And then just recently, Ghanaians were publicly informed, by Mr. Alban SK Bagbin, the longest-serving Parliamentary Representative and a front-row operative of the main opposition National Democratic Congress, that under the Mahama regime, Mr. Dogbewas the second most powerful politician in the country, and not then-Vice-President Kwesi BekoeAmissah-Arthur. What we also see in the action of Dr. Anoff-Ntow, that deservedly got the latter fired – as of this writing another news report had appeared on the web, in which Dr. Anoff-Ntow was reported to be refusing to bow out of office – is the fact that the suspended or ousted Director-General of the GBC may very well have used his blood relation to Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo to unethically, and perhaps illegally, as well, to get the latter to prosecute Ghanaian citizens who had flatly refused to pay the TV ownership levies unilaterally imposed on them by Dr. Anoff-Ntow, the apparent constitutionally legitimate backing of such decision notwithstanding.

It was also tantamount to a gross exhibition of insubordination on the part of the GBC’s Chief because as Director-General of the national broadcaster, Dr. Anoff-Ntow worked under the portfolio of the substantive Minister of Information, Mr. Mustapha Hamid, whom he ought to have consulted before any attempt to petition the Chief Justice to get her to act well outside her mandate and jurisdiction. Then also, Dr. Anoff-Ntow ought to have consulted with his immediate bosses, to wit, the Board of Directors of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation before proceeding to the Chief Justice with his rather desperate and bizarre request.

The GJA’s argument that it is the National Media Commission (NMC) that ought to have effected the removal of Dr. Anoff-Ntow, rather than the Board of Directors of the GBC, is decidedly beside the point. The Constitution contains only broad and general guiding principles for the operation and administration of statutory institutions such as the GBC. These institutions themselves have their own standing orders and bylaws governing their cultures. And this is precisely what the Board of Directors of the GBC did. If anything at all, Dr. Anoff-Ntow ought to have petitioned the Office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Ms. Gloria Akuffo, and not the Chief Justice, whose office primarily deals with the interpretation of the law, and not the prosecution of civil and criminal offenders.

At any rate, as we have been reliably informed, unlike the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), after which the GBC is modelled, the GBC does little that can be legitimately categorized as public service, or non-commercial, programming. If this widely held observation has validity, then clearly what needs to be done here is for the operatives of the GBC to make the national broadcaster as commercially competitive and viable as many of the privately-owned radio and television stations in the country, and then there will be no reason to hassle an already overtaxed Ghanaian citizenry. It is not even a question of whether the citizenry was adequately “educated” or informed about the TV licensing levies or not. It was simply morally wrong for the administrative profligacy of the GBC to be financially supported by a viewing and listening public that had far more meaningful, informative and better programming alternatives.

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