Major Sulemana won't resign today or tomorrow - Dan Botwe

The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Dan Botwe, has stated that all those calling for the resignation of Major Sulemana from the National Security outfit have evil intentions against the government.

He said NPP, as a party, is not going to allow the retired major to resign today or tomorrow as he himself has stated. According to Botwe, there are so many security officers working with the National Security outfit but it is only Major Sulemana that these people have targeted and are calling for his resignation because he has a track record of having stopped ex-President Jerry Rawlings when he attempted to overthrow the Akuffo regime on 15 May 1979.

Speaking at the presentation of certificates to polling station agents in the Effia Kwesimintsim constituency in Takoradi last Saturday, Dan Botwe said he was personally not happy with President Kufuor’s decision to accept the resignation of General Joshua Hamidu as the National Security Advisor, because it was those who want the downfall of the government that were calling for his resignation.

He told the enthusiastic party supporters at the well-attended ceremony that since the President has already accepted the resignation of General Hamidu, they will not sit down unconcerned for those who have evil intentions against the government to put pressure on Major Sulemana to also resign to enable them achieve their evil agenda. According to Dan Botwe, even if Major Sulemana should bow to these pressures and resign, his resignation would be accepted and, therefore, called on those calling on him to do so to stop.

Turning the heat on the functionaries of the former NDC government, the NPP general secretary said they have no sense of shame, otherwise they would not have been going round making so many allegations against the government that it has branded the Aveyime Rice Project as not viable.

Brandishing a copy of the NPP manifesto, Dan Botwe said nowhere did they say that the Aveyime Rice Project was not viable. According to him, NPP even promised in the manifesto that it would emphasize the expansion of rice production in Ghana and the enhancement of local rice in the local market. “We even promised that the abandoned Aveyime Rice Project will be resuscitated,” he added.

He said the NPP government’s condemnation was only on the Quality Grain issue, because the government is dissatisfied with the way the past government dished out money to Ms Cotton for no job done. According to him His Excellency Kobby Koomson, the then Ghana Ambassador to the US, even wrote a letter to the NDC government about Ms Cotton and the entire project, but his advice was ignored.

Dan Botwe further told the crowed that a few months after the receipt of Ambassador Koomson’s letter, in which he warned them about Ms Cotton and the entire project, the government went ahead and advanced a whopping sum of $20 million to the woman in the US. He also read a portion of a letter alleged to have been written by the former Vice-resident, Prof John Evans Atta Mills, to the then Finance Minister, Mr Kwame Peprah, requesting to know the details and viability of the project.

According to him, instead of the NDC accepting that what they did by advancing money to somebody for no job done was very bad, they chose to go round telling the whole world that the NPP government is against the Aveyime project, which is not true.

The Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs, Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, on his part, said the debt of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) which stood at ?2.3 trillion when they came to power has now risen to ?3.4 trillion. He said the ?1.1 trillion difference was discovered recently by the Finance Minister. The soft-spoken minister said it was because of this huge debt that the government decided not to reduce the price of petrol in the country when the price of crude oil went down on the international market, just to get money to pay this huge debt.