Friday, 29 March

'Very old' Martin Amidu 'supposedly experienced' yet survived for 'only 11 months' as AG – Godfred Dame

Politics
Attorney General Godfred Dame

Former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu is “very old” and “supposedly experienced” yet could only survive eleven months as attorney general, Mr Godfred Dame has observed.

Commenting publicly, for the first time, on Mr Amidu’s reference to him as a “young” and “inexperienced” attorney general in one of his harangues, Mr Dame told Francisca Kakra Forson on Metro TV’s Good Afternoon Ghana programme on Thursday, 24 June 2021, when asked if he felt pressured by such attacks, that: “I don’t know. I think that question, perhaps, should be addressed to Mr Martin Amidu because he was very old and supposedly experienced and yet served as attorney general for eleven months, so, you want to ask him”.

“Maybe, there was pressure on him that is why he served for only eleven months. He did only eleven months. That’s a record”, Mr Dame noted.  

Despite Mr Amidu’s attack on him, the 42-year-old attorney general said he had a cordial and professional relationship with Mr Amidu while he served as Special Prosecutor.

“When he was in office as Special Prosecutor, I used to visit him and he knows it and he actually used to say much of the time that I was the only person in this ministry, who used to visit him and that is it”, he said.

Mr Dame said despite Mr Amidus attacks on him, “I have nothing against him”.

“… There is no basis for a beaching of that cordiality. If he has breached that cordiality, it’s really entirely up to him”, Mr Dame said.

The attorney general also mentioned that Mr Amidu survived opposition MP Dr Dominic Ayine’s legal suit that challenged his qualification as SP with regard to his age, thanks to him.

“What I can say is that when his office was threatened by a legal suit, his own status as the Special Prosecutor was threatened by a legal suit; Dr Dominic Ayine instituting an action against the attorney general and himself, I rather defended him [Amidu]; defended him to the best of my ability and my defence was actually upheld by the Supreme Court and that resulted in him continuing as Special Prosecutor”.

“So, in a way, I’m responsible for his being Special Prosecutor, which he so much touts about”.

In his article titled: ‘The MPs’ Double Salary Criminal Investigation Docket Was Handled By The Attorney General And Never By Martin Amidu As Special Prosecutor’, the former deputy attorney general in the Rawlings administration, who later became attorney general in the Mills administration, wrote the following about Mr Dame:

“On 17th May 2021, a friend called my attention to the fact that he had heard a radio discussion on Oman FM in which I was being blamed for the Government’s inability to prosecute the Members of Parliaments’ double salary case which the Office of the Attorney General had allegedly transferred to my office for prosecution, and I had failed or refused to prosecute same before my resignation.

This was certainly a deliberate and knowing concoction of fake news from the newly minted Office of the Attorney General to assassinate my integrity and character.

The politically-inspired propaganda against my integrity, which sought to link my resignation to the failure or refusal of this irredeemably corrupt Government for four whole years to deal with the simple offence of double salary or stealing (as the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police Service put it), are false, infantile and barefaced lies intentionally concocted and put out by the Office of the Attorney-General to the unsuspecting public under the sub-heading “Godfred Yeboah-Dame.”

The effigy of the Attorney General published alongside the concocted falsehoods of me resigning without prosecuting a case, which was never handled by my office during my tenure as the Special Prosecutor, demonstrates how shamefully low the hitherto respected ethical office of the Attorney General, which I had the privilege of serving in for over fourteen years of my career, has descended into since 7th January 2021.

Mr Godfred Yeboah Dame, the young and inexperienced Attorney General should know now that he is the Attorney General that there are no records in his office or the Director of Public Prosecution’s office showing that the Attorney General, Ms Gloria Akuffo, old enough to be Mr Dame’s mother, sent any docket on this case to me as Special Prosecutor to prosecute.

No such letter was ever received by me when I was the Special Prosecutor, and no records exists in the Office of the Special Prosecutor of receipt of such a letter or docket from Ms Gloria Akuffo.

Mr Godfred Yeboah Dame, under whose name the Daily Guide Network reports and attributes the infantile lies that: ‘The Office of the Special Prosecutor which was headed by former Attorney General Martin A.B.K. Amidu, took over the case to do the prosecution but the process was not completed until he resigned late last year’ ought to have developed the capability of asking the Director of Public Prosecutions as to the status of the case instead of linking to my resignation to a matter which never came under my watch just to assassinate my character”.

Commenting on the substance of Mr Amidu’s allegations, however, Mr Dame said: “The article that he wrote, very empty. Criticism for what? What did he say that I had done? That Daily Guide had written a story about him and then he says the attorney general is behind it. It’s totally spurious, speculative, and conjectural and everybody saw it”.

Mr Dame said he chose to remain silent on the matter “because there’s nothing to respond to and I still have not responded to it. I will not take him on. If I were to take him on, clearly, there are all manner of actions open to me because really, what he did was baseless, but I’m saying that I’ll leave it at that”.

 

Source: Classfmonline.com