Martin Amidu arrested?
Martin A.B.K Amidu
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
A source at the National Security said he was picked up from his home by agents of the National Security a week or so before the election to an unknown destination to prevent him from dropping bombshells.
He was subsequently alleged to have been kept incommunicado for a couple of days until after the elections.
Martin Amidu himself was tight-lipped on the issue when DAILY GUIDE reached him on phone on Tuesday to verify the story, but he declined to make any comment.
“I don’t want to make any comment about that,” he said.
Indications were that no charges were brought against him.
Mr Amidu had been leading a crusade to stamp out corruption in the current NDC administration, especially payments of questionable judgment debts to people close to the government including Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who walked away with GHC51.2million without any contract.
He was determined to retrieve the Woyome payout before he was sacked from government.
It would be recalled that Mr. Amidu made allegations to the effect that the late President John Evans Atta Mills had set up a Committee of Enquiry to investigate the acquisition of aircraft for the Armed Forces negotiated by the then Vice President and now President John Dramani Mahama.
Members of the supposed committee were said to include Interior Minister William Aboah, George Amoah and Brig. Gen. Allotey (Rtd), and they were to investigate the processes of the acquisition of the five aircraft, including the infamous Embraer 190 aircraft and hangar for the Ghana Armed Forces from Brazil.
Although President Mahama never responded to the allegation, it was believed that was one of the reasons Mr Amidu was detained.
Apart from that, the source told DAILY GUIDE the no-nonsense former Attorney-General, who was relieved of his post for obviously opening his mouth too-wide in an attempt to expose corruption in the Mills/Mahama administration, was thought to be having some delicate information which if released, would affect the chances of Mahama, who was the Presidential candidate of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the party in that election.
The government, as it were, thought it wise to put the man who prides himself as ‘citizen vigilante’ into the cooler to prevent him from making explosive statements about the party before the elections.
Interestingly, the supposed committee tasked to investigate the acquisition of aircraft for the Armed Forces was said to have neither sat nor written a report before the demise of the late president.
In one of his several epistles, Mr. Amidu stated that “pressure groups never allowed the Committee to take off.
But the very fact that the late President Mills contemplated this Committee meant that he was uncomfortable with and suspicious of the alleged inflated prices of the aircraft.”