Dzifa Attivor's Comments Not As Bad As What Others Have Said - Kofi Adams

National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Kofi Adams has said comments by Transport Minister, Dzifa Attivor is not as bad as what others have said.

According to Mr. Adams members of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), especially the presidential candidate, have also made very divisive and tribalistic comment which was worse than what the former Minister made.

“I don’t think that her statement was very injurious like somebody saying ‘yen Akan fuor' or 'all die be die' or regions that do not have resources should not be given the right to lead in this country,” Kofi Adams said on Joy News/Multi TV’s news analysis programme, Newsfile.

Attivor has come under scathing attack after she asked Voltarians to retain the NDC in power in order to prevent herself and other NDC bigwigs in the region from going to jail should the NPP win power.

She told members of the NDC in Ketu South constituency of which Agricultural Minister, Fiifi Kwetey is MP that, “When the NPP came to power in 2001, a lot of our people were sent to prison; Victor Selormey, Dan Abordakpui, and so on, were imprisoned. Was it because no other persons committed a crime in Ghana? But it was only Ewes that they jailed."


Dzifa Attivor

"I want to entreat you not do anything for me and Fiifi Kwetey go to prison. It lies with you all to ensure that no Ewe person goes to prison. So I am pleading with you to work hard and deliver the 120 thousand vote target for the party in the constituency,” she added.

Former president Jerry John Rawlings after the comment chided the former minister describing it as distasteful. The Peace Council, a section of the NDC and many other Ghanaians, have condemned the remarks.

But the General Secretary of the NDC, Kofi Adams says the former minister’s assertions is not farfetched.According to him, the NPP has stated clearly when it came to power that “by the time they finish dealing with us the NDC will be no more” and that is exactly what they did in power.

He added that “In 2009 that another respectable chief made it very clear that the people of Volta were made to feel like strangers in their own country. Dzifa not the first to have given this indication.”

However, Editor-in-chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper, Kweku Baako does not agree with Kofi Adams. He said Dzifa Attivor’s comment was totally out of place, adding “it lacked logic, consistency, fact, truthfulness.”

“If you took the cases that went to court under the NPP administration one by one and looked at those who were charged for prosecution and those who were eventually convicted and sentenced or those who were acquitted and discharged, it will not support her case. I don’t see why we are doing this to ourselves, she goofed big time,” Mr. Baako said.

He explained that Selormey, Abodakpi and Tsikata, who are all ewes got convicted and sentenced by a court of competent jurisdiction so any notion that it was politically procured is flawed.

“They [NDC] claim this was persecution and selective justice. I am sure madam Attivor was coming from within that context. If she had gone on that trail, all you could be doing is to challenge her on the basis of legal and judicial arguments and not the ethnocentric…it is because she threw the thing in that realm that is why she got it wrong,” charged Mr. Baako stated.

“Indeed, Tony Lithur with the Abodakpi case claimed that there was some miscarriage of justice and was pointing to some politics, a committee was set up headed by Justice Brobbey but the findings of the committee showed that there was nothing of that sort.”

The veteran journalist argued that based on these facts and many others, the former minister has committed a blunder and the best thing she should do is express remorse, retract and apologise.