Asiedu Nketia Thrown Out

Moves by the General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Asiedu Nketia, to get a suit brought against him by the Chairman of the Audit Service Board thrown out of court has crumbled.

This follows the dismissal of an application filed by his lawyers which sought to throw out the suit filed against him by Prof. Dua-Agyemang.

The NDC scribe who claims he has evidence and witnesses to support his allegations against the former Auditor General was praying an Accra High Court to dismiss the suit because it cannot rely on the English translations of the comments he made in the local ‘Twi’ dialect.

But the court presided over by Justice Sophia R. Bernasko-Essah, dismissed the application and directed the plaintiff to amend his case to include the original comments which were made in the Twi language.

Asiedu Nketia therefore has 14 days within which to file his defence which then paves the way for the substantive matter to be heard.

Former Auditor General, Prof Dua-Agyeman, who is now the board chairman of the Audit Service,  dragged Asiedu Nketia to court demanding GH₵15 million over comments he made on radio which intended to damage his reputation.

The NDC scribe popularly known as ‘General Mosquito’ has been accused of making slanderous statements against Prof. Dua-Agyeman that he was fond of churning out fake audit reports based on which he was sacked by the accountants association.

But in what could be described as a delay tactics, his lawyer, Johnson Normesinu, filed a motion and prayed the court to strike out the plaintiff’s pleadings as well as dismiss the suit on the grounds that the pleadings did not disclose any reasonable cause of action.

It is his argument that the court cannot rely on the English translations without having access to the original comments made in Twi which the plaintiff finds to be defamatory.

But private legal practitioner, Gary Nimarko, lead counsel for Prof. Dua- Agyeman, in a sharp rebuttal, opposed the application saying the court cannot dismiss the case because it has not been served with the original comments made in Twi.

According to him, Asiedu Nketia filed a counter claim to the suit in which he claimed that he has evidence and witnesses to confirm his statements.

Statement of Claim

Prof. Dua-Agyeman in his suit avers that without basis or probable cause, Asiedu Nketia “ostensibly sought to impugn the integrity, dignity and reputation of the Plaintiff and to ridicule him in the eyes of right thinking members of society”.

The plaintiff avers that Asiedu Nketia on October 2, 2018 made some unsubstantiated and disparaging statements on an Accra based radio station, Neat FM accusing him of producing fake audit accounts in 1983 while he was at the Audit Service leading to his dismissal.

BY Gibril Abdul Razak