Kufuor Plane Arrives

Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguide.com
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The much talked-about Presidential jet which was ordered by the Kufuor administration amidst wild criticism from the then opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has finally arrived in the country.

The ‘Falcon 900EX Easy Aircraft’ purchased by the then New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is scheduled to be commissioned at what is expected to be a colourful ceremony at the Jubilee Lounge at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra at 3pm today.

A statement issued by the Public Relations Directorate of the Ghana Armed Forces and signed by Flt. Lt. Francisca Aholo, on behalf of the Director, said “the Ghana Air Force has taken delivery of the newly-acquired Falcon 900EX Easy Aircraft, spares and tools on behalf of the Government of Ghana.”

The Falcon 900 Presidential Jet would thus replace the Fokker 27 aircraft ‘flying coffin’ that the Ghana Air Force has used for the past 37 years as presidential jet.

Ghanaians would recall how the Kufuor administration was heavily criticized by the NDC for putting in the order for the purchase of the aircraft.

When the NDC eventually assumed power in 2009, there were widespread speculations in government circles about the intentions of the Mills administration to cancel the deal. It later ordered more jets.

A proposal was taken to Parliament by Defence Minister Lt. Gen. J.H Smith, in which the NDC government requested the approval of the House to purchase another jet for the exclusive use of the President.

This generated a heated debate between a former Minister of State at the Interior Ministry in the Kufuor administration, Nana Obiri Boahen and a former deputy Minister of Defence in the Rawlings administration, Dr. Tony Aidoo.

Nana Obiri Boahene was utterly shocked at the “quick u-turn” by the Mills administration to purchase an aircraft for the state after “harshly criticising” former President Kufuor when he attempted to acquire one for the same purpose.

Dr. Tony Aidoo, who is Head of the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Presidency, however denied the claim since according to him, the NDC in opposition did not describe the purchase as needless, but only complained about what he termed ‘proper procedures’ for the acquisition which were not followed.

He noted that the NDC also felt that placing orders for two planes was uncalled for, especially when neither of them could serve the Armed Forces and both were solely to be used by the Presidency.

He said the NDC in opposition then took into account too much expenditure at the time, including the construction of the Jubilee House and the celebration of Ghana@50 which made it unwise to spend that huge amount on the two jets.

However, Nana Obiri Boahene disagreed with Dr. Tony Aidoo’s justification for the purchase of the jets.

Nana Obiri Boahene, a Sunyani-based lawyer, said it was a “misplaced priority” for the NDC government to purchase an airliner in the face of high unemployment and general economic hardship nationwide.

Porn Hits Veep

Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The official website of Vice President John Mahama, which has the portal of the government of Ghana and its coat of arms, has been inundated with disturbing scenes of pornography which some have described as ‘hot and spicy’.

Daily Guide made this discovery when the paper attempted to access some information on the Veep’s website on the topic ‘Youth and Agric: the Way Forward for Ghana’s Economy’.Daily guide learnt that the site is very popular because of the steaming sex scenes posted on it. Noticeably, there is no discussion on agriculture but rather visitors to the site seem to be interested in the hot pornography.

The website, which is regularly updated with the vice president’s official activities, shows a rather shocking revelation of nude pictures of men and women, both white and black, engaged in ‘hot ‘ sex on a page that is supposed to promote farming. Consequently, these scenes project the vice president and the Republic of Ghana as promoting a different kind of ‘farming’ to the country’s youth on the website.

The obviously ‘nasty’ scenes which were supposed to have been posted by one Kapmimb Asperee, with the following email address terrakot@gaymike18.com , have been logged in the discussion forum of the Vice President’s website.

It is so easy to access t he site and post a comment as visitors are invited to ‘Join the discussion on http://www.viceprez.gov.gh/forum_list.php which eventually leads to the 15th comment where a sender has created the following link http://lion-search.ru/swinger/1, http://lionsearch.ru/swinger/2 and http://lionsearch.ru/swinger/3, all in jpg format showing these ‘despicable’ sex scenes.

The nicely designed site has on the portal ‘Home Vision, Media, Events and Contact’, with the veep in pictures with Chinese officials, South Korean officials, Kofi Annan, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo and some important chiefs that he recently interacted with.
When browsers click ‘Contact’, it leads you to “John the discussion” which shows today’s topic as ‘Youth in Agric, the Way Forward for Ghana’s Economy. Then you are asked to ‘Join Now’ with no inhibitions whatsoever, which leads you to ‘view discussions’ which, when clicked, opens you to the scenes on uninhibited pornography for free, lots and lots of them. The first entry seemed to be from a serious forum discussion member.

Among other things that have been written there are “gangbang wife swingers black swingers porn mature free porn video swinger free porn swingers free movie pussy swinger gang bang swinger pics anal sex fetish swingers interracial sex free mature swinger vids mature swingers blow job free bi swinger porn nudist swingers and naturalist nude beach swingers young swinger wife amateur swinger sluts free real stories swingers fuck site swinger xxx amateur home.”
Another of these comments and pornographic materials was posted by one Lizant Axialar on Saturday, September 18, 2010 with the following email address commonee@mail.ru, with comments like “Russian baby girls names Russian woman of darts – leading to a Russian dating club at http://alfredler.info/dating/iri-online-dating-agencies/russian-woman-of-darts.html” whilst another from sub0@capitalshield.net, with the website address http://babeblogx.co.cc/teens.jpg also saying “Get your access to a huge archive of nasty teen porn.”

It further stated, Barely legal teen amateurs and hot 18-20 y.o. models expose their young fresh bodies to camera and get dirty in thousands of breathtaking hardcore scene. Premium quality high-resolution pics and videos bringing you the hottest teens to ever appear on the Internet await you inside! Teen filled with jizz video teen sex school vids movies sex videos for teens gay black twink sex movies bukkake gangbang teens videoscute ten camp video teen tube videos black teen booty video xnxx teen Japanese sex videos teens in stockings videos”.

These revelations indicate that a lot of seeds were being sown, but unfortunately not the kind of seeds that will grow on Ghana’s fertile farmlands, indicating the truth about the care and professionalism of the administrative minders of the site and the vice-president.
The postings were obviously made by spammers who may have even done it through automated posting, but with the veep’s site administrator keeping mute, he or she may apparently be having fun.

Even the most primitive of webmasters know that there are two golden rules when you allow comments on your website.A webmaster told Daily Guide, when contacted that the golden rule of administering websites are never to allow comments to be posted unless approved by the webmaster, and to institute a “Captcha” facility to prevent automated postings (A Captcha or Captcha is a type of challenge response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer).

He said there was no excuse for this kind of sloppiness on the website of the Vice President of the Republic, as it is accessed throughout the world. He therefore called for the immediate dismissal of the webmaster and anyone involved in managing the site who should have known better.

Initially, the paper thought it was an unfortunate oversight.
This has been on the webpage for a while and has remained there since Daily Guide accessed it on Sunday, September 19, 2010 and neither Vice President Mahama nor the managers of his website have thought it wise to remove them.

It is therefore not clear whether or not the office of the vice president or the managers of the site have seen the page or do follow the discussions on the forums that have been created for such intended purposes.

Minister John Tia Goofs

Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The Mills administration is making frantic but unsuccessful attempts to put a spin on the ¢1.6bn scandal that has rocked the Ministry of Information, in which presidential aide Stanlislav Dogbe’s name has popped up as the culprit.

Barely 24hours after the story broke and generated impassioned debate across the country, Information Minister John Akologu Tia issued a statement denying the matter.

Though he claimed the money was received and had been used for its intended purposes, he could not provide any documentary evidence to justify how it was expended.

DAILY GUIDE has learnt that auditors are finding it difficult to close the account of the Information Ministry because of the inability to retire the ¢1.6bn cash received for the supposed 2010 budget public education.

Instead, the Minister described DAILY GUIDE’s publication as false in spite of the fact that Stan himself has admitted that the money was expended on hampers and workshops for some journalists including the Institute for Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ).

However, IFEJ President, Lloyd Evans who doubles as Business Editor of Daily Graphic, has denied Stan’s claim that the Ministry sponsored the group’s programmes.

Speaking on Joy FM yesterday, Mr. Evans explained that IFEJ’s programmes had never received financial support from the Information Ministry as had been suggested.

He added that not even the budget seminar they had with the Ministry was supported by the Ministry. He explained that it was the World Bank that had been supporting the group’s programmes.

Mr. Evans has since dared Mr. Dogbe and the Ministry to come out and tell Ghanaians when and how they sponsored any of their programmes.

In his statement, Mr. Tia described DAILY GUIDE’s story as baseless, unfounded and without merit “as available records here indicate that the said fund was used for the intended purpose and the project account is awaiting validation by external auditors”, saying “indeed, Mr. Dogbe was not in charge of disbursing the fund.”

It is therefore not clear why the Minister and his Ministry are not putting out the facts and figures about how the money was used and exactly which individuals and institutions it was expended on during the said public education campaign on the 2010 budget.

Also, the Ministry said it found it unfortunate that even after Mr. Dogbe provided DAILY GUIDE with details of his role and what he knew about the campaign, the paper went ahead to suggest that he personally carried out those activities and handled its allocated funds, stressing “it is even more absurd when the newspaper claimed that the money was spent on Christmas hampers.”

Interestingly, that was exactly what Stan told DAILY GUIDE when he was contacted on the story before its publication. The tape of the interview is available if the minister would need a copy.

As Minister for Information, John Tia wondered why the reporter and the newspaper did not contact his office on the allegations though he was not the Minister at the time.

The Minister, a journalist before going into politics, blamed some disgruntled staff of the Ministry for packaging the story for DAILY GUIDE, confirming that all is not well with the staff of the Information Ministry, particularly the directors.

He failed to acknowledge the fact that DAILY GUIDE spoke to Zita Okaikoi, the Minister at the time who declined to comment on the issue.

That notwithstanding, John Tia, a former correspondent of the Ghana News Agency, said the Acting Director of the Information Services Department (ISD), Nee Agiri Barnor, has not been sidelined, saying “we have and will continue to work effectively with staff of the Department”, insisting that “the Minister believes in teamwork and has been sparing no effort at building an efficient and effective team to manage government’s communication.”