Paul Adom-Otchere, host of Good Evening Ghana on Metro TV, has discredited former president Jerry John Rawlings’s speech during the commemoration of the 31st December, 1981 coup d’état in Winneba.

Rawlings had said that during the reign of General Kutu Acheampong, he tried investigating some people who were plunged into unimaginable corruption but the lead investigator was killed.

Paul, who had earlier attributed the collapse of Ghanaian businesses to the former president stated that General Acheampong did not attempt to investigate any corrupt activities during his regime in the first place for the investigators to be killed.

“...You said that Acheampong was investigating something about some of these businessmen and the people who were doing the investigations were killed. We don’t believe that, we’re sorry, we don’t believe that. We’re sorry Mr President, that is not true; Acheampong didn’t do that,” he narrated on Good Evening Ghana on January 7, 2020.

Paul Adom-Otchere added that, “He [Acheampong] didn’t investigate and the investigator was killed. That is not the reason[s] why people’s businesses should have been taken…but we’re sorry Mr President...”



What Rawlings said:

Addressing a durbar to climax the 38th anniversary of the 31st December coup d’état at the Winneba Lorry Park, former president Rawlings stated that during the Acheampong regime, the banking sector especially the Ghana Commercial Bank was plunged into unimaginable corruption. The bank served as an avenue for cronies and a particular ethnic group to feed fat on loans without collateral.

These loans, he said, were never paid.

Recounting what happened to the investigators, Mr Rawlings said, “Acheampong set up a two-man committee to investigate those happenings within the Ghana Commercial Bank. In no time, one of them [investigators] was ambushed, killed and burnt to death in his car. The other gentleman said no he is not going to engage in this thing to be killed. How bad could the situation have been to warrant such a heinous and atrocious crime in an attempt to conceal their misconduct?”

He added that the one who survived and believed in probity and accountability joined the revolution and became one of the deputy governors of the Bank of Ghana.

“He finally had job satisfaction because integrity had returned to this country under the revolution,” he told the people at the durbar grounds.

Mr Rawlings noted, “That small boy called Adom-Otchere or something wakes up every day to speak nonsense. When we say we are practising capitalism in Africa, then we must be careful because the leaders tend to steal from the masses.”

The former president during his speech descended angrily on some of the architect of the revolution stating that they have forgotten the circumstances that gave birth to June 4 and December 31 with some spending huge resources to sponsor the distortion of the history through outright lies, half-truths, and rendition by cowards who run away during those heady days.

“It is however unfortunate that some have chosen to siphon the negatives, leaving out the overwhelming gains made by these interventions of the people. The two interventions, June 4, 1979, and December 31, 1981, were not about Rawlings. They were the effects of the mood of the country and the mood of the people. In telling the story, the context and the circumstances cannot be discounted or overlooked,” he stressed.