Posted: Daily Guide |Tuesday, 01 February 2011
www.dailyguideghana.com
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The 11-year old form-two pupil of the University Primary and Junior High School, Kumasi, who suffered an ordeal at the hands of former Mayor of Kumasi, Nana Akwasi Agyemang aka Okumkom, has narrated his harrowing experience to DAILY GUIDE.
Aaron Okyem Djan walked into the offices of DAILY GUIDE with his mother to tell his story after Akwasi Agyemang went on several radio stations across the length and breadth of the country yesterday denying the story.
Nana Agyeman’s defence has been that he was ‘not mad’ to detain such a boy for merely beating his little son, Nana Kwame.
But Aaron still maintains that the man indeed held him hostage for some hours at his Dichemso residence in Kumasi last Thursday, January 27 and tortured him.
He recalled how Agyemang ordered him to squat in his house, with both hands held at his back and his legs tied while it drizzled.
On that fateful day, Aaron said, he and five other school mates including his 9-year-old sister and Nana Kwame, the 5-year-old son of the former Mayor, were on their regular taxicab that picked them up after school when Nana Kwame put up a bad attitude on their way home.
Nana Kwame, who was holding a toffee molded like a ring, was pinching him and the others in a playful but hurtful manner so they asked him to stop being naughty.
As his actions became more irritating, Aaron asked the driver to ask Nana Kwame to stop it but he failed and eventually kicked him with his muddy shoes.
At this point, as he complained again, the driver, who he referred to as ‘Wofa Charles’, also asked Akwasi Agyeman’s little son to stop but he would still not budge.
According to Aaron, he felt another pinch of the instrument near his eye so he also tapped him on the shoulder, but Nana Kwame started to cry loudly until he reached home and alighted from the car.
Barely a minute after he got down from the car, Aaron said they saw Nana Kwame coming back with his father who beckoned the driver to stop and ordered them to enter the house.
When he and the driver got to the house, Aaron narrated that a furious-looking Akwasi Agyemang asked them not to only tell why his boy was crying but also explain what exactly happened.
Just as he was about to tell his story, he said, Akwasi Agyemang sent his watchman to call in another boy who was in the car during the incident and lived in the neighbourhood. He said the boy narrated that it was rather his son who started the whole squabble.
The boy noted that the former mayor would not listen to the eyewitness account, adding that “he said his son was too young so he can’t do this thing, I did it, so I should sit on the floor.
“When I sat on the floor, he told our driver that he should take my colleagues away so he has detained me. So I sat there for about three or four hours from about 4pm to about 8pm, in a kneeling position until it started to drizzle.”
Not even the pleadings of Akwasi Agyeman’s own sister, the driver and the boy could touch the heart of the former mayor and royal of the Ashanti kingdom to let the boy go home.
At this point, Mr. Agyeman called Aaron’s mother on her cell phone and told her he was going to send her son to ‘abofraboni’ school, Borstal Institute, because he had misbehaved.
“He asked that we should all go on our knees to beg his son before he will let me go.”
GUN SHOTS
After all that drama, Akwasi Agyemang still appeared not satisfied and now asked Aaron what sort of punishment he should be given.
He then asked the boy to kneel down and raise his hands whilst he (Agyeman) went to his vehicle, which was parked in the compound, for a ‘shot-gun’, threatening to shoot the boy.
If not for the intervention of the former Mayor’s sister, the victim said, he did not know what would have befallen him with Okumkom firing warning shots with the gun.
The driver had to assist Aaron to walk to the car since, after his long-sitting posture, the traumatized young boy could barely move his trembling legs.
Meanwhile, the 46-year-old taxi driver, Charles Osei Yaw, has confirmed Aaron’s account to DAILY GUIDE.
Despite meting out such inhuman treatment to the boy, Nana Agyemang walks on the streets of Kumasi a free man as he is yet to be questioned over his acts.
The Tafo/Pankrono district police commander, Superintendant Kwaku Buah, said he could not speak on the issue since the case had been transferred to the Ashanti regional police command.