Did Bagbin Want Akufo-Addo Ambushed By Anas?

In the wake of revelations indicating that Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas had reached a verbal agreement with the Akufo-Addo Jubilee House not to publicly reveal its sneak-preview reaction before the officially scheduled screening of Tiger-Eye PI’s documentary exposé on corruption at the headquarters of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), which Jubilee House appeared to have reneged, the longest-serving National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament came out virulently swinging against the decision by the Leader-Proprietor of the globally renowned team of private investigators (See “Anas Erred by Showing Exposé to President – Alban Bagbin” CitiNewsRoom.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/24/18).

Now, I have an axe to grind with the Nadowli-Kaleo NDC-MP from the Upper-West Region of Ghana, who seems to think and believe that the Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, ought not to have been given the opportunity to preview the documentary that had been scheduled for public screening on June 6. I have a beef with Mr. Bagbin because when Mr. Anas and his Tiger-Eye PI team of private investigators rather unwisely collaborated with then-President John Dramani Mahama to produce an exposé on the judiciary nearly three, or so, years ago, the sometime Parliamentary Majority and Minority Leader did not criticize a rabidly anti-judicial President Mahama for flagrantly breaching the conventionally established sharp professional divide between politics and journalism or media practice.

It also rather curious, or strange, that since it came to light that just about the same time that he mischievously, viciously and self-righteously collaborated with Mr. Anas to globally humiliate some members of the Ghanaian judiciary, President Mahama was also willfully and criminally involved in facilitating the drawing of double salaries by some of his executive appointees, in particular Members of Parliament who also served as either substantive ministers or deputy ministers of state. In chastising the Tiger-Eye PI private investigative team for allowing Nana Akufo-Addo and some of the members of his staff and advisers to preview the aforesaid documentary, Mr. Bagbin, who also doubles as 2^nd-Deputy Speaker of Parliament, was inescapably and unquestionably guilty of the unconscionable pursuit of double standards.

On the one hand, Mr. Bagbin offers the damning implication that, somehow, former President Mahama had rights and privileges that ranked over and above the collective sovereign rights and privileges of the Ghanaian citizenry at large, while on the other hand, it was absolutely anathema and one that verged on downright heresy to have President Akufo-Addo invested with some of the same rights and privileges so readily afforded former President Mahama by Mr. Anas and his Tiger-Eye PI investigative team. Now, the one problem that I have with this drunken fixation on documentary exposés produced by Mr. Anas, this time with the collaboration of the foreign press, to wit, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), is the fact that such seemingly obsessive and addictive fixation clearly appears to be fast undermining the official and traditional role of such state security agencies exclusively charged with the investigation of political corruption and crime in the country as the Criminal Investigations Division of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and the Economic and Organized Crimes Office (EOCO).

Then also, as one critic aptly pointed out just the other day, Mr. Anas and his Tiger-Eye PI team have become so seemingly pathologically obsessed with corruption scandals in the country that one wonders if this private investigative team of patent mercenaries is equally capable of filming or documenting some of the many positive things that are also occurring in the country, such as the rolling out of progressive and forward-looking development programs and policy initiatives by both the Government and the private sector. We also have a right to know precisely how much Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his Tiger-Eye PI team are being paid by such well-heeled globally renowned and established media organizations as the BBC and Al-Jazeera. And also, of course, how much deeply interested Anas mentors like Mr. Kweku Baako, the Editor-Publisher of the New Crusading Guide are also raking in for their efforts.

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