MP's battered Wife turns to cops

Accra, July 26 (Gye Nyame Concord) -- The battered wife of minority spokesman on finance, Moses Asaga lodges a formal complaint with the Police after the forceful ejection from her matrimonial home on June 8 by her husband.

A copy of a compliant to the police after the forceful ejection from her matrimonial home on June 8, made available to this paper by police sources, suggests that Mrs Florence Asaga, wife of former Deputy Finance Minister and MP for Nabdam, Moses Aduko Asaga, was indeed beaten.

The compliant also listed at least five people as having taken part in the thrashing meted out on her that night, including the husband, alleged chief instigator, whom she said began it all and ordered his younger brothers and dependants to finish it off.

The compliant also cited some leading members of Parliament from the NDC and NPP as possible eyewitnesses, indicating that they may have seen her, when she was whipped and dragged into the waiting 4* 4 Grand Cherokee Jeep belonging to the Asaga family, before being hearded off to the Osu Cemetery area, opposite the kingdom Bookshop, Accra, close to 11 pm.

Family sources also told this newspaper that Mrs Asaga, a graduate caterer, was beaten and almost stripped naked in the presence of her three kids (names withheld) aged 13,12 and 6, as well as a foster daughter aged 15. She had to hold torn parts of her dress to prevent her nakedness from being exposed, relatives told this paper yesterday.

Eyewitnesses have also told the Gye Nyame Concord that Mrs Asaga walked to the police to file her compliant with a badly torn cloth, swollen cheek and a bandaged arm as further proof of her beatings at the hands of her husband.

Among the relatives and dependants of the MP for Nabdam, whom she claimed also beat her on the orders of Asaga, were Joe Azumah, a younger brother of the former minister who works with the Veterinary Services Department, Yaw Kpebil, a National Service person, and Alex Sangoh and Daniel Garbrah, both of the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS).

The only person, who reportedly did not touch her, this paper gathered, was one Aminu, the driver of the Cherokee Jeep in which she was sandwiched and taken to Osu while being led by a VW Passat saloon car personally driven by the MP for Nabdam.

The names of possible eyewitnesses who all live on the same compound with the Asagas around the BNI offices at the Ridge area, include Deputy Minority Leader and MP for Avenor-Ave, Edward Korbly Doe Adjaho, Majority Chief Whip and MP for Talensi, John Akolugu Tia and MP for Nkawkaw, Kwabena Adusah Okerchiri.

But explaining his side of the story on radio last Wednesday, Hon Moses Asaga told Peace FM that he did not beat his wife but only touched her.

He, however, suggested that others would kill if faced with the reasons for which he is reported to have beaten his wife, accusing his cousin, one Ms Arsha Timako, of stoking the matrimonial fire in his home by reporting the matter to Mr Ben Ephson, Editor of the Daily Dispatch.

Speaking to this paper later, Ms Timako, who described herself as a close relative of Asaga, insisted that she had seen her cousin molest the wife several times and that she only chose to highlight the case because he had “consistently refused to stop beating the wife.”

“I walked out of my marriage after 27 years of abuse and vowed to myself that I would not sit and let any other man beat the wife, be it my cousin or not. I am ready to tell it all and he should be prepared. No one would cover him up this time.”

Interestingly, the Managing Editor of Gye Nyame Concord, who became privy to murky details of the story and received very worrying and damaging pictures and other evidential materials to back them up over a month ago, initially chose to sit on the story and consequently urged the couple to sort things out.