Kwesi Pratt: Saga of an alleged PNDC informant

The Former national organiser of the erstwhile People’s National Party (PNP), Mr. Samuel Addai Amoako, yesterday told the National Reconciliation Commission that the editor of the Insight newspaper, Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr., led some soldiers to the Korle-Bu teaching hospital to finish him after he had been shot earlier in his home by the agents of the PNDC.

He said a soldier, Samuel Amedeka by name, led those who came to his house to attack him and that two civilians in the persons of Akwasi Agyeman and Kwasi Adu were also among them.

“Kwesi Pratt, Kweku Baako, the late Tommy Thompson and others came to my house to rescue me when they heard that I had been shot and I asked them to leave me after taking me to the residence of the British High Commission because I realized that one of my rescuers was a dangerous element.”

He said that after they had left, he went to the Korle-Bu teaching hospital for treatment where some soldiers followed him to kill him. “I was lucky that my real name was not written in the register so they came and gave several shots without identifying me.”

“Mr. Kwesi Pratt went to Tema Secondary School with my nephew, they used to sleep in my hall so I regarded him as my nephew: I was shocked when I got to know of it later, while in London, that he was a super grass of the soldiers who came to look for me at the hospital,” said Addai Amoako.

According to Amoako, his house became a brothel for the cadres as well as members of the Committee for Defence of the Revolution (CDR) and the Workers Defence Committees (WDCs) while Kwasi Adu, who was among those who came to his house, repeatedly raped his niece until she became pregnant. “He has a son with my niece and the boy is 21 years old. He does not take care of him.”

Samuel Addai Amoako said Capt. Kojo Tsikata, Jerry John Rawlings, Chris Atim and one Segbefia called him around 4:30 at dawn on December 31, 1981 and asked him to support an impending coup and that he should go to the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation to announce that Ghanaians should support the coup. But he refused.

He showed a publication he caused to be made in the January 2, 1982 issue of the Daily Graphic that Ghanaians should not give Rawlings the chance to remove the Limann government unconstitutionally.

Again he fixed a megaphone on the top of his vehicle, drove through some streets of Accra calling on Ghanaians to resist the coup.

When asked by the commission about an allegation that the late President Limann knew something about the 1981 coup, Addai could not confirm for a fact but said that he reported to the late President three times about an imminent coup. However, Dr. J. S. Nabilla, the then minister for Presidential Affairs in charge of National Security, and Limann felt he was making a sweeping statement.

“I went to Limann on December 8, 14 and 21 to report to him about my information but they did not believe me. Limann was a troubled man in his own glorious office for he was not allowed to work,” he said.

“For a period of 18 hours after the coup, things were in a stalemate in the country and when I went to the Castle to look for the president and his vice, to take action to reverse it, but they were nowhere to be found. I was told Joe Diggie (referring to DeGraft Johnson, then vice president) had worn a woman’s dress to run away.”

He told the commission that a new Mercedes benz car he had used for only one week was taken away by the agents of the PNDC and therefore called on the commission to get him back his car.

He also asked that his grandson and the niece who was raped should be compensated.