Season’s Greetings To Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu

I wish to extend my sincerest congratulations to you, Mr Martin Alamisi Burnes Keiser Amidu, Ghana’s First Special Prosecutor in the Fourth Republic, on your appointment to this high office of our land. I wish you well in the remaining 11 months in 2020. I am a stubborn slave of yours, who should have sent you a hamper instead of an epistle, but as hard as I tried to be good, I came across one of my favorite quotes in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, “.....when the mother cow is chewing grass, the younger one watches its mouth”. So my resolution in 2020 is to be like you sir; my gifts to your office henceforth will come as epistles.

Born in 1952 in a neighborhood of Daduri around Bawku, Mr Amidu grew up in his early years not loving formal education until his disciplined mother forced the bait down his throat. He finally made it by graduating from the Ghana School of Law in 1978. As an ardent lover of Karl Max and Engels, Amidu became a socialist by default and this led him to persuade with socialist traditions in the PNDC as one of the leading members. He served in various capacities from the days of the PNDC through to NDC 1 and 2. Mr Martin Amidu is a known principled man who can pull down his father’s lone statue in the village if that were the only obstacle to a working system. I love him and I love reading from him.

Sir, it’s been a long time I’ve read from you. Is everything ok in your office? Are you sure your principles you applied to retrieve Woyome’s controversial GHC 51m still applies even as you are now part of the government of Nana Akufo-Addo? It looks like your appetite for due process is dead. This time, the only thing I hear in the news is you lamenting over institutional decays. Is this for real? Is that you? Now the institutions are obstructing you and not the regime and not even the head of the regime. How hard it is for a mouth engage in chewing to spit.

This was Mr Martin Amidu, created, branded and refined into a Citizen Vigilante by the NPP and their media cabal. He was well placed in the NPPs triangular game-plan in which he and his aides (Konadu et al) had their pointers at HE John Mahama. The media as the second player in this game-plan engaged in their issue-centering and the headlines out of this were mostly on corruption. Mr Amidu was either invited to speak about this or several biased headlines were made out of his one-sided epistles. The NPP as the beneficiary of this game-plan only played a soft one by always making references to what one of the founding fathers of the NDC himself had said about his own brother from the North. He was always conveniently referenced by the NPP while he nodded with broad smiles.

Mr Amidu stood on one weak leg to pull the strings and succeeded in tagging John Mahama as the most corrupt, most wicked and most insensitive President Ghana ever produced. This weak leg was the Woyomegate. Reading from Amidu from 2015 right to the last article he authored on the 5th of December, 2016, in which he addressed the nation and called on all to vote out Mr John Mahama in order that he (Amidu) will be able to retrieve the Woyome cash, two things stood out; Woyomegate and the baseless allegations against the EC Chairperson of her plans to rig the 2016 elections for the John Mahama and the NDC. Nothing substantial, nothing meaningful.

Mr Martin Amidu, a Builsa playmate, fixed his right fist on one jaw of John Mahama to cause his fall just so he Amidu gets employed in Nana Addo’s government. He was going to be offered a job as a Special Prosecutor with all the powers to crush John Mahama and his appointees even out of government. He didn’t know that all what Nana Addo and his NPP were up to was to set him up against John Mahama while they (NPP) get the opportunity to loot. This is what all the noise about the Special Prosecutor was/is about.

Mr Amidu isn’t as principled as was touted, this is my personal observation though. He knew the benefits and the package that was going to come with the fall of John Mahama. But, I don’t know if Ghanaians are surprised just as I am that the Almighty Citizen Vigilante was so blinded that he was easily dribbled this time around by the NPP. He couldn’t even see that the office as was created and celebrated was a bait to get him caged. He didn’t know that he was being cajoled by Nana Addo so his wings could be clipped and his mouth sealed. Mr Amidu didn’t know that his Citizen Vigilante powers were going to be stripped naked and finally implicated and disgraced. This is the NPPs agenda, but Mr Amidu out of hatred and some pain which Mahama didn’t cause anyway, went eating any mashed kenkey from the NPP.

I want to ask you, Mr Special Prosecutor one question, at the time you were fighting over the Woyome cash with the late Mills and his appointees in 2011, did Mahama have any such executive powers to authorize or not to authorize any such payments? The day you were alleged to have threatened to slap Prof Mills which finally earned you a sack from government, was Mahama in the picture as one of the accomplices of that loot? So, how come the pain out of your exit in government resulting from the Woyomegate became the Achilles hill for your brother, HE John Mahama who was nowhere closer to this deal in his capacity as a Vice President?

Throughout your fight, you made it looked and sounded like there were no institutions, and that Mr John Mahama was the Lucifer who called all the shocks. The Attorney General’s Department didn’t have to do anything as long as John Mahama was President. Even the independent courts didn’t matter any longer, Mr Mahama was supposed to run after Woyome, catch him, slap him and collect the money in the bag for Terkper to go deposit at the BoG money box.

Isn’t it curious that even at a time almost every Civil Society Organization, the Diplomatic Community, the Ordinary Ghanaian have all seen the clandestine moves by Nana Addo and his appointees to obstruct all investigations and prosecutions against his regime, he (Amidu) still sees Nana Addo as a saint who deserves all the praises while all others including you and I deserve the blames? Mr Amidu blames the same media who made him, blames CSOs, accuse appointees of Nana Addo, blames HE John Mahama and the NDC MPs in Parliament, even blames the ordinary Ghanaian and other anti-corruption institutions for his failures as a Special Prosecutor. Even when President Nana Addo and his appointees run counter to his investigations into the Charles Bissue bribery scandal, Mr Amidu still thinks the President is not to be blamed. The same principles he applied to Mr John Mahama are being whitewashed with the technicalities of the law and the OSP Act.

So Mr Amidu can look us in the face and say that his office has no power and jurisdictions to investigate financial and economic crimes, What! So when the Office of the Special Prosecutor’s Act was being designed and laid before Parliament by Nana Addo and his AG, did Amidu see or had an input? So he thinks the two articles he wrote about the OSP Act, 2017 (959) were enough to absolve him from blames of the current rot in that office? As a Principled man as being touted, Mr Amidu had an option to either turn down the appointment or fight with all his powers as a Citizen Vigilante to ensure that independent powers were granted the OSP to investigate and prosecute cases such as the PDS loot, the MMT procurement scandal, the BOST thievery etc. But we were told in a yet another one-sided epistle that the OSP had no jurisdiction to investigate the PDS scandal. Is he for real?

Where is the Woyome cash, Mr Special Prosecutor? What happened in court between you and the Deputy Attorney General, Mr Odame? I learnt you as usual went with your Builsa skins to the court and begging for RESPECT from the young Deputy AG when he called you a liar before the judges. So you see where you have landed yourself? With all the attacks on Mahama did you ever hear a sound of a falling pin from him? What happened to the ruling granted you under John Mahama to retrieve the money from Woyome and Waterville? How much have you retrieved so far under Nana Addo the Saint? So this time it’s not the President’s making, is it?

If Mr Amidu has forgotten, I wish to remind him of his own assurances under Oath during his vetting on the 13th of February, 2018...”I can’t live in harmony with criminals...” you indicated on that same platform that you abhor criminals and that Ghana isn’t a cow to be milked by some selected few. You promised Parliament and Ghanaians that when approved, you were going to use whatever powers you would be offered to fight graft. These were your own words under oath. Do you think you should resign? Do you think you don’t deserve your fat salaries and budgetary allocations? You are now caged by Nana Addo in the same den with Charles Bissue...you are forced to live in harmony with him against your wish and so called principles.

The Amidu who could write epistles, go to court, grant interviews, mount platforms and speak against corruption all in empty stomachs can no longer work without a well furnished office with mountains of budgets. He now cries like a spoilt chap even if his car runs out of gas. Today Amidu doesn’t have an office, then he’s given one. Tomorrow he doesn’t have the financial muscle to investigate people and institutions, he’s given GHC 180m allocations although only 16% was released (GHC 27.8m) at the end of 2019. Then the next minute he Martin doesn’t have investigators, immediately some were sent on secondment from the EOCO and other anti-corruption agencies to start with, even with that he had problems. Now, Mr Amidu laments more than he works. Go and catch Mahama and his appointees based on the allegations you founded and there you are. Go and catch Nana Addo and his Charles Bissue and we are told that wasn’t part of the agreement. So between you being a Special Prosecutor with all budgetary allocations fat allowances, all prosecutorial powers AND being a Citizen Vigilante with limited scope, with one laptop and a phone, which one is beneficial to the Ghanaian? Ghana was better off with you as a Citizen Vigilante under Mahama than you as a Special Prosecutor under Nana Addo.

Mr Amidu has caused more financial loss to the state than Mr Woyome and Waterville have taken from our cash box. The money expended in all the fruitless investigations are a waste on the public purse. The office is as needless and useless like the Ministry of Procurement. Ghanaians need to rise to fight this waste. The President you so praised as the savior of Ghana and the public purse has turned out to be the biggest disappointment to everyone including his wife except you Mr Amidu. What are your fears? You would only forgo your job and not your person if you speak up. If you were not craving to be part of the problems of the system and get paid for doing nothing, then, I don’t see why you are still in office till now.

“Give a Northern brother a scholarship and he will sell it not to his brother, but give him a dagger and the next person he will stab is his twin brother”...The fall of Amidu is a lesson to some of his Northern cabal who were put together to pull their own down. Manasseh is gone half way, Madam Otiko is gone long time, Mr Bugri Naabu is no more, Mustapha Hamid has a faint voice now, Hon Bukari of Upper East is now an ordinary serial caller. HE John Dramani Mahama said in his last address to the nation before his exit, that posterity will judge him. I didn’t know it was a curse until Mr Amidu started to fall out with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General and her Deputy. The rest might just be lucky if they repent.

Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to you Mr Amidu. I wish you well as you strive to redeem your lost image in the remaining 11 months of 2020 instead of fighting the graft as you promised. Be reminded that you said somewhere in November 2018 that if by middle of 2019 no serious prosecution is initiated by your office against Former President Mahama and his appointees, it means you have failed any such move after then will be witch-hunting. I don’t know whether that was why you glossed over the MMT case, the BOST scandal and then running aimlessly after one of your brothers from Upper East, Hon Ayariga to court over nothing. Maybe to prove to your boss the Lucifer that you are actually doing his work. I am laughing like a killer.

It’s your slave, Kudus
From Issifu Seidu Kudus Gbeadese
(0244198031)
[email protected]