A speech from the New Patriotic Party’s 30th-anniversary thanksgiving service on Sunday has some Ghanaians on social media in a frenzy.
Top NPP leaders, including President Akufo-Addo, were seated in the front row of the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA) auditorium as the day’s preacher delivered some stern words to the congregation.
“NPP@30: Our common tradition, holding and working together a stable and prosperous nation” was the topic of the event.
Apostle Dr. Emmanuel Osei Kwabena Donkor, a former general secretary of the Christ Apostolic Church, emphasized unity as a means of fostering national development.
What language do you speak? Is it egotistical or one that would help Ghana advance? At the end of the day, we will fail and the country will collapse if our sole concern is for ourselves, simply I, me, and I, he remarked on Sunday.
Dr. Kwabena Donkor urged all parties, including political parties, to forgo sloganeering and cooperate together if the nation is to see real progress.
“If you have the men, without unity you don’t have the might. Listen, because if the men are there and the men are not united, they will not give you their brains. The party will suffer and the nation will suffer,” he preached amid cheers from the auditorium.
Ghanaians on social media believe the sermon was conspicuously blunt and bold.
Police are presently holding a University of Ghana Level 100 student for reportedly killing her lover at Ashaley Botwe School Junction in Accra.
According to the authorities, a Technical Officer named Michael Fiifi Ampofo Arku helped Safina Mohammed Adizatu, age 23, perpetrate the crime.
According to the authorities, the deceased, Frank Kofi Osei, was a Ghanaian citizen who resided in Canada and had visited the nation on holiday.
According to reports, Safina, also known as Safina Diamond on social media, and Arku repeatedly stabbed the victim in the chin, jaw, and back before strangling him to death.
The two were charged with murder and conspiracy when they appeared in court in Adenta.
Osei, who is now dead, visited Safina, his fiancée, who lives at Ashalley Botwe School Junction on Sunday, July 24, 2022, and made the decision to spend the night, according to the prosecution’s case, which was made by Chief Inspector Jacob Nyarko.
The prosecution asserts that Osei was fatally strangled after being repeatedly stabbed with a knife on his chin, jaw, and back during the early hours of the morning by Safina, Arku, and other unknown accomplices.
The corpse was in the room for a full day before Safina and Arku cleaned up the blood, according to the Chief Inspector.
The accused later took the deceased from the first level of the multi-story structure down the staircase, dumped him at the gate of the home where the deceased had parked his Toyota Tundra, and then cleaned the blood stains off the stairwell, according to the prosecution.
At around four in the morning on Tuesday, July 26, Safina called a police officer to report that her boyfriend had just visited her and had passed away in her bed.
According to the prosecution, the police officer alerted the Police Patrol Team, who arrived on the spot in a hurry and discovered the deceased’s body lying at Safina’s front gate.
Safina and Arku, meanwhile, were not to be found.
Safina was apprehended after the police tracked her down to the Ashalley Botwe School Junction, according to Chief Inspector Nyarko.
According to the prosecution, Arku fled to Kumasi after perpetrating the crime.
Then it continued that actions were being taken to capture additional conspirators who were eluding capture.
In the meantime, the prosecution has aggressively opposed the accused’s request for bail.
After the proceedings, the court presided over by Nana Aba Quaiba Nunoo, upheld the accused’s pleas, and remanded the two in police custody for a further appearance on August 12.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the minister of communication and digitalization, has lambasted Ghanaians for their response to deadline extensions for SIM card re-registration.
In an interview with Accra-based Peace FM on August 1, the minister lamented Ghanaians’ tendency to rush to registration centers at the last minute and then leave the location as soon as a deadline extension was announced.
Despite many deadline extensions, the Ablekuma West MP claimed that some Ghanaians chose not to reregister their SIM cards on purpose.
“Before the 21st March that we announced the extension, the was queue everywhere you go at the network operators places. NIA opened offices that were registering people for Ghana Card. When we announced the extension, everybody went back to sleep. Till when will we continue with this? Until last week, the was no queue anywhere. We are all witnesses to it. How long must that continue?
“Some have made up their minds that if given 10 years to do the reregistration, they will wait until the last minute. We have done this one as a conditional extension. We will review it in August. Today (August 1), there is no queue at the centres. Everybody has gone to sleep. We will wait till September ending and come and say ‘Ursula, extending it again’ meaning it is deliberate,” she said.
The present conditional extension of the deadline will be reassessed in August, and anyone who hasn’t registered by then will pay more to use an unregistered SIM, according to Ursula Owusu-Ekuful.
Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Telecommunications Chamber, has urged the government to provide the National Identification Authority (NIA) with additional funding so it can speed up the registration process for the Ghana Card.
He claims that the ongoing Ghana Card registration process, which has been plagued by long lines and other difficulties, has discouraged many Ghanaians from obtaining the cards.
According to him, this is a major factor in the sim re-registration process’s delay.
He said that the government must give the NIA more logistics so that the Authority may get the registration process as close to the people as feasible on JoyNews’ PM Express.
“In the same way, if we want to elect politicians, we register voters at the polling station level rather than at the constituency level, bringing the registration as near to the electorates as possible.
“We need to take advantage of this care imperative of wanting to get everybody’s sim registered to say that we’re giving NIA money again, go out and do another mass registration but take it as close as possible to these people.
“We need to ensure that when we do that there’s data, there’s connectivity in those places so that they can actually issue and print the cards at that place,” he stated.
His remarks come as hundreds of people are waiting in lines at the El-Wak stadium and the NIA offices in Accra for identity management services like replacing lost cards, updating personal records and fixing mistakes.
Many people have been impatient due to the lineups’ poor progress.
Image caption,Bin Laden (left) and Zawahiri together declared war on the US and organised the 9/11 attacks
The US has killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has confirmed.
He was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday.
He and Osama Bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks together, and he was one of America’s “most wanted terrorists”.
Mr Biden said Zawahiri had “carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens”.
“Since the United States delivered justice to bin Laden 11 years ago, Zawahiri has been a leader of al-Qaeda,” Mr Biden said. “From hiding, he co-ordinated al-Qaeda’s branches and all around the world, including setting priorities for providing operational guidance and calling for and inspired attacks against US targets.”
“Now justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” he added.
Zawahiri took over al-Qaeda after the death of Bin Laden in 2011.
Officials said Zawahiri was on the balcony of a safe house when the drone fired two missiles at him.
Other family members were present, but they were unharmed and only Zawahiri was killed in the attack, they added.
Mr. Biden said he had given the final approval for the “precision strike” on the 71-year-old Egyptian after months of planning.
His killing will bring closure to families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the 2001 attacks, Mr Biden added.
“No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” said Mr Biden, adding that “we shall never waver from defending our nation and its people”.
Mr Biden said Zawahiri had also masterminded other acts of violence, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole naval destroyer in Aden in October 2000 which killed 17 US sailors, and the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 223 people died.
He insisted that Afghanistan would never again become a safe haven for terrorists.
A Taliban spokesman described the US operation as a clear violation of international principles – but did not mention Zawahiri.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan and the region,” the spokesman added.
However, US officials maintained that the operation had had a legal basis.
The killing of Zawahiri comes nearly a year after US troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on the orders of Mr Biden, bringing an end to a 20-year military presence there.
Image caption,The BBC’s Afghanistan Correspondent, Secunder Kermani, visited the suspected location of the strike in Kabul
Under a 2020 peace deal with the US, the Taliban agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in areas under their control.
In background briefings, US intelligence officers said Taliban affiliates had visited the safe house after the strike in an attempt to cover up evidence of his presence there.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri in Kabul, the Taliban had “grossly violated” the peace agreement.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was the ideological brains behind al-Qaeda.
An Egyptian doctor who was imprisoned in the 1980s for involvement in militant Islam, he left the country after his release and became involved in violent international jihadist movements.
Eventually he settled in Afghanistan and joined forces with a rich Saudi, Osama Bin Laden. Together they declared war on the US and organised the 11 September 2001 attacks.
It took a decade for Bin Laden to be tracked down and killed by the US. After that, Zawahiri assumed leadership of al-Qaeda, but he became a remote and marginal figure, only occasionally issuing messages.
The US will herald his death as a victory, particularly after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, but Zawahiri held relatively little sway as new groups and movements such as Islamic State have become increasingly influential. A new al-Qaeda leader will no doubt emerge, but he will likely have even less influence than his predecessor.
The drone strike is the first known US intervention inside Afghanistan since the military pullout last August and, despite the withdrawal, the decades-old “war on terror” grinds on, the BBC’s North America Correspondent John Sudworth observes.
Days before the withdrawal, a miscalculated US drone strike killed 10 innocent people in Kabul, including an aid worker and seven children. The US said it had been a “tragic mistake” and had been aiming to target a local branch of the Islamic State group.
According to reports, the first-year Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) student who was allegedly raped by two men, one of whom was a police officer, is disturbed and has been thinking about committing suicide.
On the current events and politics program GhanAkoma on Akoma FM, the university relations officer, Dr. Daniel Norris Bekoe, announced the development. “The victim (name withheld) after the sad incident has been contemplating suicide due to victimization and stigmatization, so we have really protected her identity and we have also commissioned a counselling session for her to ensure she is reintegrated into social and academic lives on campus and off campus,” Dr. Bekoe revealed to the show’s host Aduanaba Kofi Asante Ennin.
A female student was allegedly gang-raped by a police officer and a KNUST final-year student named Lance Corporal Frank Adu Poku and Joel Osei Owusu after they tricked her into an off-campus hostel in Bomso. They then allegedly pounced on the victim, raped her in turns, and videotaped the entire incident.
Although the police administration has not released an official statement on the case, prosecutor ACP Kofi Blagozi revealed to press during the court hearings that Lance Corporal Frank Adu Poku had been detained.
ACP Blagozi claims that the incident occurred on July 19, 2022, when the victim, who sells women’s apparel, put some of the goods up for sale online.
Joel Osei Owusu, one of the accused, contacted the victim after seeing an advertisement for items for sale and saying he had similar items and wanted to give them to her.
He persuaded her that she could make more money from the items he planned to give her, and she agreed to see him on Tuesday, July 19.
“Under the guise of showing her the garments, the suspect led the victim into his room. Suddenly, he closed the door and put the key in his pocket, and pounced on her as they alternated in gratifying their sexual appetites.”
KNUST Commissions Counseling Session for Rape Victim
Dr. Norris Bekoe, the university relations officer at KNUST, emphasized the necessity of ordering counseling for the victim, adding it is essential to make sure the victim doesn’t harm herself.
We carefully handled the situation when the victim revealed that she had been thinking about killing herself because she felt hopeless and dreadful about having to face the world after such trauma and the stigma it carries. We hope the court will treat the poor girl justly.
How Akoma FM blew the story
The two victims had previously been reported on by GhanAkoma, a current events and political program on Akoma FM, thanks to credible sources, even before they were transported from Apiadu Police Station and KNUST Police Station to the Ashanti Regional Police Command.
There were signs that the KNUST District Police were treating the investigation roughly and attempting to hide the wrongdoing because one of their own was a suspect.
People are asking how a July 19 incident could result in suspects being detained in detention for nearly a week before being presented in court. The matter was transferred from KNUST District Command to the regional command for additional investigation after the police became aware of the media attention from Akoma FM and were forced to inform their superiors.
Suspects remanded
The Asokore Mampong District Court remanded police officer Lance Corporal Frank Adu Poku and his accomplice, Joel Osei Owusu, on Thursday, July 28. They were accused of gang-raping a first-year student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
The two suspects are expected to appear before the court on Tuesday, August 9.
Beatrice Annan, a member of the NDC communications team, has criticized Communications Minister Ursula Owusu for her attitude on matters relating to the execution of the required SIM registration.
She claimed that the minister ought to have asked her son, who is now 24 years old, for advice on how to carry out the policy since he would have done a better job.
She said on the Good Morning Ghana program that while she supports the SIM registration initiative, policymakers must take their time and pay attention to criticism when putting policies into practice.
“I listen to the Minister at the press conference yesterday and I thought that Minister, Ursula Owusu would have gone to her 18-year-old son for some wisdom on policy implementation because by this time the son is 24-year-old. In 2016 he was 18 and 6 years down the line I think he is 24 years. “Because she told us that if all you need to be in government is what the NDC was doing, her 18-year-old son would have done a better job.
“When it comes to policy formulation, implementation and policy synergy policymakers must take their time and listen to feedback,” she said.
The NDC Communication Team member added that given her position of leadership and her duty to serve the people of Ghana, the Minister for Communication should try to reason with them rather than making pronouncements that the people of Ghana must accept as definitive.
“…But yesterday listening to her, I think she should get over herself, come down to the level of every Ghanaian and know that if you are in leadership, it’s for every Ghanaian. It is not a place for you to exercise self-aggrandizement. It is not a place for you to believe that what you say is final. I like her personally, but I think she should get over herself.
“For her to say that she reluctantly agreed to extend the deadline, who is she? She doesn’t have any capacity, howsoever described, to cut off anybody’s sim card. What law is backing what she is doing? What regulation gives her that power to do and implement what she is doing in the manner she is doing it,” she said on the show.”
On Sunday, July 31, 2022, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the minister of communications and digitization, announced that she had reluctantly agreed to extend the deadline to September 30.
She disclosed the second deadline extension after consultations.
“Upon consultation, the government has decided to grant a final conditional extension.” The program will be extended to September 30 to end on the anniversary of its commencement, which will give us one full year of SIM re-registration,” the minister stated.
Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has warned Ghanaians without a Ghana Card to acquire them because life in Ghana will soon be unbearable without the card.
Although it is the prerogative of every Ghanaian to register for the card, they should also bear in mind that their action will have consequences, the minister told host Kwami Sefa Kayi in an interview on Peace FM’s morning show “Kokrokoo”.
When asked what she will do to those who choose not to comply with the directives to register their SIM cards with Ghana Card, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said; “You can’t begrudge them.” That’s their prerogative, but actions have consequences… So, as you have made up your mind not to do it, it’s your prerogative. It’s your choice, but when the consequences come, don’t blame your network operators or the government”.
She, however, emphasized that “it’s mandatory that you shall use the Ghana Card for SIM registration purposes . . . It is mandatory for us to use the Ghana Card for good reason . . . It is in our interest to use a single identifier through our life for a good database”.
The Minister further stated that the resultant effect of not participating in the ongoing Ghana Card registration exercise is that: “It will be difficult to live and work in this country without the Ghana Card at some stage.”
President Akufo-Addo, says the effects of the Slave Trade have been devastating to the African continent and to the African Diaspora.
According to him, the entire period of slavery stifled Africa’s economic, cultural and psychological progress.
Speaking at the Reparations and Racial Healing Summit on Monday, 1st August 2022, President Akufo-Addo stressed that reparations for Africa and the African diaspora are long overdue.
He bemoaned the fact that the subject of reparations “becomes a debate” only when it comes to Africa and Africans.
According to the President, when the British ended slavery, all the owners of enslaved Africans received reparations to the tune of 20 million pounds sterling, the equivalent today of 20 billion pounds sterling, but enslaved Africans themselves did not receive a penny. Likewise in the United States, owners of slaves received 300 dollars for every slave they owned; the slaves themselves received nothing.
Indeed, in the case of Haiti, the country had to pay reparations amounting to $21 billion to French slaveholders in 1825 for the victory of the great Haitian Revolution, the first in the Americas and the Caribbean which freed the slaves.
President Akufo-Addo continued, “Native Americans have received and continue to receive reparations; Japanese-American families, who were incarcerated in internment camps in America during World War II, received reparations. Jewish people, six million of whom perished in the concentration camps of Hitlerite Germany, received reparations, including homeland grants and support”.
He contended that, “So, it is time for Africa, 20 million of whose sons and daughters had their freedoms curtailed and sold into slavery, also to receive reparations.”
Whilst reiterating that no amount of money can restore the damage caused by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and its consequences, which have spanned many centuries, the President stated that “nevertheless, it is now time to revive and intensify the discussions about reparations for Africa. Indeed, the time is long overdue.”
He, thus, asked participants at the Summit not to overly concern themselves with modalities for the payment of reparations, but, rather, work to establish, unequivocally, first the justice in the call for reparations.
“And, even before these discussions on reparations conclude, the entire continent of Africa deserves a formal apology from the European nations involved in the slave trade for the crimes and damage it has caused to the population, psyche, image and character of the African the world over,” the President added.
With the Caribbean Community, CARICOM, having taken the lead in the reparations debate, President Akufo-Addo urged the African Union to engage with “our kith and kin from the diaspora”, and form a united front to advance the cause of reparations.
“The discourse on reparations cannot succeed without emphasis on racial healing. We need to heal from the wrongs of the past in order to capitalise on the opportunities that await us in the future,” he added.
The integrity of the Ghana card, according to Dr. Peter Otokunor, deputy general secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has allegedly been compromised.
According to him, “political and shady techniques are being utilized to discriminate against persons who are otherwise eligible to hold the Ghana card.”
In an interview with Joy FM’s Top Story on Monday, Dr. Otokunor made this statement.
Because of the political prejudice this administration is using while registering members, he added, “The Ghana card is experiencing an integrity dilemma.”
He claims that by removing these obstacles to registration, the card’s integrity might be recovered.
Additionally, in response to Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia’s suggestion that the Ghana Card might end up becoming the main form of identification for voters in future elections, Dr. Otukunor expressed a different point of view on the matter.
He claims that he opposes using the Ghana card in place of voter identification in the 2024 elections.
“Nobody should delude him or herself that making such comments and bringing such public discourse will get Ghanaians to support the idea that we are going to use the Ghana card for elections,” he stressed.
He explained that this is due to the fact that Ghanaians are not yet prepared to use their Ghana cards for elections, adding that “the system is not ready, the membership and coverage are not ready, and the extent of the depth of the registration is not up to the point where we can use it as a basis to vote.”
He did not, however, completely rule out the possibility of future use of the Ghana card.
“I subscribe to the view that if we are able to exclude all these possibilities of excluding people and preventing them from getting the Ghana card from the registration system, there may be a point in time where the integrity of the card would get to a point where we can use it to vote,” he noted
