RE: Hotel Worker Sacked Over Bagbin’s Baby

“Hotel Worker Sacked Over Bagbin’s Baby” And “Bagbin’s Wife Has Many Boyfriends!” Rejoinder.

Your front page publications of Thursday and Friday November 3rd and 4th respectively, on the above banner headlines refers.

I am very hurt, shocked and traumatised by the contents of the above publications. I have no lady friend, 2nd wife or a two and half year old baby boy who were guests at Central Hotel located close to the British High Commission and the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) at North Ridge in Accra. I know both the Proprietor and the Manager of the Hotel in question. They are both Northern brothers and close friends. I worked with the Manager at the defunct Continental Hotel now Golden Tulip, Accra, in 1983. I have visited the Hotel many times from early 1990 to date. But I have never met a lady guest in the Hotel room.

No lady guest has ever been close to me and no such lady has been invited to a gentleman in the Hotel in my presence.

I have been in Accra and attending to my official duties daily. I only left Accra at 7 am Thursday, 3rd November 2011 by Antrak Air to Tamale to chair the Steering Committee meeting on the implementation of a Canada sponsored Northern Region Small Towns Water project (NORST). The meeting started at 9 am on same day and ended well after 7 pm.

You and your reporter are fully aware I am the Honourable Member of Parliament for Nadowli West Constituency, a former Majority Leader of the Parliament of Ghana and the current Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing. So you know where to get me.

There is no evidence also that you and your reporter made effort to contact the management of the Hotel. Yet you proceeded to publish your stories. Your statement that you tried to reach me without success because both “phone calls and text messages... but hit a snafu as he failed to respond to them” is spurious.

The contents of the two publications have inflicted on me, my family, party and government immeasurable and irreparable damage. To ensure that no reader doubted the person you targeted to destroy you carried my photos on both publications. You consciously, deliberately and callously published the two editions sequentially to make assurance double sure that you have taken away your pound of flesh. An unconditional apology and retraction of the story will not assuage the damage and pain you have afflicted on my family, person, wife, reputation, body and soul.

I have together with my wife and family been so scandalised and traumatised that we believe only the Good Lord can intercede to prevent the unimaginable. An earlier attempt by me at restitution of my reputation from one of your publications by instituting court action since 2010 has not yet come up for hearing. I can only in the meantime, request for a publication of this rejoinder unedited and with the same prominence as the two publications. Thank you.