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General News of Wednesday, 14 February 2018

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

A name is a nonsense syllable – Martin Amidu

Martin Amidu, Former Attorney General play videoMartin Amidu, Former Attorney General

Special Prosecutor nominee, Martin Alamisi Amidu has defined ‘name’ as a ‘nonsense syllable’.

Martin Amidu said this when asked to explain how he got all his five names during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament Tuesday.

According to him, ‘Alamisi’ was given to him because of the day he was born and after he was baptized he chose Martin.

“When I was born, my birth-day was used to call me because in some customs babies are not named immediately so the Alamisi followed me,” he said

Amidu said, he got the name ‘Burnes’ when he was at the Bawku middle boarding school

With a smile on his face, he said, “when we were at Bawku middle boarding, there was a picture of Sir Alan Burnes and everybody called me Alan Burnes… so I decided to call myself Burns”.

The nominee said he got the name ‘Kaiser’ while at the commercial school

According to him, he read about the German Kaiser in his history class and he grew fond of him thus the adoption of his name.

“I became the dining hall prefect and each time I stood to talk my friends would say, silent the Kaiser speaks,” he said.

The Special Prosecutor nominee noted that he bears the name ‘Amidu’ because it was his father’s name

Martin Alamisi Burnes Kaiser Amidu said at one point in his life he wanted to drop all his names and only maintain Alamisi Amidu but as he entered law school and read about Garvey Williams who said “what is there in a name, a name is a nonsense syllable” so he decided to keep them.