How colleagues lied, denied me Journalist of the Year award - Adeti recounts

Investigative Journalist, Edward Adeti has recounted how colleagues in the media fraternity conspired and wrote a petition against him to be denied a top journalist award in the country.

He disclosed that there is hatred among members of the fraternity in the Upper East region where he plies his trade to the extent some persons are prepared to stand on the side of the bad guys against him.

Reacting to claims made by the Former Minister of State at the Presidency Rockson Ayine Bukari that he will be willing to forgive him if he calls to apologise, the undercover journalist who was the brain behind the infamous bribe take, took colleague journalists to the cleaners for offering him the platform to repair his badly bruised image.

A post on his Facebook page reads "Look, the evil some media practitioners in this region are doing against their few colleagues who want to do the right thing is beyond what words can describe. I have been writing from childhood, yet I can’t find words to best describe the depth of that evil and hate. Many are not aware of the sacrifices investigative journalists make to save them.

They met me and promised to transform my life if I agreed to cover up the dark secrets of their ex-parte meetings with the judge. The cash and the motorbike were just the beginning. The CEO of the Chinese mining company (Shaanxi) is very wealthy. I’m told he is among the first ten richest men in China and he is the fifth foreign investor in all of America. A Deputy Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, whilst telling me I did the right thing by rejecting the items, told me I could have built three mansions if I had agreed to protect the company and the judge. I decided to put the public interest first.

After the judge recused himself and the Minister of State resigned (you know their names as revealed in the past online publications) the house where we lived was broken into. We were robbed. We had to throw away every food— cooked or raw— after the attack for fear of consuming any stuff the faceless attackers might have poisoned in our absence. My second child was ill at the time; we threw away his medicines as well because we were not sure if the medicines, too, had been poisoned. Then, my family and I went apart to undisclosed locations. Anas gave me a great deal of support at the time and he was among the few people who knew where I was. Kent Mensah and Emmanuel K. Dogbevi linked me to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

When I returned to the region, a handful of colleagues (Senyalah Castro Cazo, Francis Dabang, Chidozie Stephen Ngams, Gaspard Ayuureneeya, Agana Blessing Simon and a few others) supported me and have continued to do so. Some media practitioners rather supported a reprisal move by an evil empire in the region to evict me from where I lived for exposing their dark deeds. But I found even a better place without a struggle with support from the good people in the region. When I was due to pick up an award as the Best Journalist of the Year in the country, the same media practitioners, led by a journalist who had stood unsuccessfully as a witness against me in court sometime ago when I was sued ‘in the line of duty’ in the region, wrote “a misleading petition” that I should not be given that award. Nobody knew there was such a petition except the petitioners and the addressee. I was not copied. It was only after I was denied the award it came to light that there was a petition. And they have done worse things than I have mentioned here.

I was telling Simon Agana on air this morning that if wealth, fame and awards were my aims in Journalism, the haters of the unchanging truth and the lovers of the fleeting mammon would have succeeded in shifting my focus through their secret and open prejudices. These are not my aims. Just as I said in an earlier post today, I will address those who have chosen the side of oppression, those who are putting their interest first ahead of the public interest, in due course.

I’m not saying this here because I need anything from anyone. Honestly and humbly speaking, if anybody calls me to offer any help because of this post, I won’t welcome it. It is serious. There is a reason for letting you know this. I only must say this because some people certainly did not know the agonising sacrifices we go through in silence (even whilst we smile) because some people feel we must die because we have refused to do what they do and we have been an obstacle to their selfish interests. I can’t count what I have lost. I must announce it here and now for the public to know that we have arrived on the threshold of a new era where we now need to protect journalists from journalists.”