IPS Founder wants the institute back

Accra, Feb. 3, GNA - Nana Kwaku Opoku Ampoma, founder of the Legon-based Institute of Professional Studies (IPS), on Tuesday prayed the National Reconciliation Commission to assist him to have the Institute restored to him.

The Witness, who is also the Paramount Chief of Amoafo Traditional Area in the Ashanti Region, said the government of the erstwhile Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) allowed him to engage a Valuer, who estimated the cost of the property at 14 million cedis. That Government, he said, rather offered him four million cedis on "take it or leave it" basis.

He said, he took it for fear of his life because of the hostile political situation prevailing at the time.

Nana Ampoma said the PNDC later recognised him with a bust and an ex-gratia award of one million cedis.

The 68 year-old chief said the take-over of the Institute, which he said, he established from his own resources was ill-motivated, and prayed the Commission to get the Government to pay the difference and put him on an entitlement of a former head of a tertiary institution. Mr Robert Yaw Vondi, another Witness, resident in Dansoman in Accra, told the Commission that soldiers from the Castle shot his thigh, when he tried to persuade them to release two of his friends they arrested at Kantamanto in June 1992.

He said the friends were fighting in the evening.

Mr Vondi said the soldiers let his friends alone and ran away after the shot.

He said the bullets penetrated his thighs, and he was consequently hospitalised at the Police Hospital, and later for five months at the 37 Military Hospital at his own cost.

Mr Vondi said he petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), and also met former Inspector General of Police, who, he said, assured him of justice, but the said soldiers were never identified so he gave up on the case.

Sheikh Sulemana Ali Nintsye, another Witness, complained of the seizure of 8,000 dollars and 9,500 French Francs at the Kotoka International Airport for failing to declare those currencies with customs officials in 1984.

He said colleagues at the Islamic University gave the money to him to be given to relations back at home and Togo, to undertake the Hajj pilgrimage.

Sheikh Nintsye said he was not aware of any requirement to declare monies one had on him on arrival at the Airport and added that he had since been haunted by the loss of the monies, which he said, had made it impossible for the would-be beneficiaries to undertake the Islamic Hajj.