Prof. Frimpong-Boateng heavily exposed

Professional Friends of Gabby Octhere Darko, (FFOGOD) has described the recent attack by Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng on Gabby Otchere Darko, one of the astute lawyers in the country as irreverent and should be ignored by all well meaning Ghanaians.

They have penned down 10 questions and are urgently demanding answers for these questions from Prof. Frimpong-Boateng:

1. Did Gabby’s clients not have all the requisite licenses and permits required to do legitimate large scale mining in the country and were they all not issued by authorised institutions of the state?

2. Will Prof. Frimpong-Boateng ordinarily consider a call from a lawyer about his client’s interest to do with his ministry as interference in his ministerial duties?

3. Will he have mentioned the name of the lawyer representing his client as unethical and sad if the said lawyer was not related to the president?

4. Will he as a doctor refuse to attend to even a convicted and condemned murderer in need of a heart surgery?

5. Did he himself not own and operate small scale mining concessions?

6. Did he consider what he did as a small scale miner as illegal?

7. Gabby Otchere Darko said on Citi FM that his client Imperial Heritage had all licences including EPA permit. Was that not issued by an agency under Prof Frimpong Boateng’s ministry when he was a Minister?

8. If the permit from the EPA was okay, why then would he question a lawyer representing his client and asking him questions about the client being frustrated when he had permits to operate?

9. Are Ghanaians expected to take seriously an aggrieved former Minister who makes such a blatant lie of a childish claim that the President’s house in Kibi, which is in the middle of a heavily populated area of the town was invaded by galamsey and that the President’s home garden had even been affected by galamsey?

10. Prof Frimpong-Boateng says he checked and confirmed that the claim that the President’s home in Kibi had been affected by galamsey was true. Does he then really know the difference between truth and fabrication?

11) Why did he exonerate his son from the galamsey menace and decide to implicate innocent Ghanaians? …we should not play politics with this but rather lets allow our institutions to work and where there are lapses, we correct.

“The accusation by Prof. Boateng is needless which has no merit and should be treated with all the contempt it deserves” it said.

“Instead of Prof. Frimpong-Boateng to applaud Otchere Darko for his swift intervention and saving the country from a potential judgment debt from Heritage Imperial Mining , he is rather accusing Gabby Otchere Darko for supporting illegal mining, which is ridiculous.

What Otchere-Darko did was to offer legal services to Heritage Imperial Mining, which had been in active mining in the Apaprama and Kobro forests in Manso in the Ashanti Region. This intervention averted a possible judgment debt to the state” it said.

According to a statement issued and signed by the spokes person of the Group, Selikem Asinu, Prof Boateng’s attack on Gabby Octhere Darko could be best described as menopausal myopic syndrome, adding that he must purge himself from this syndrome.

According to FFOGOD, Prof Frimpong Boateng has insulted the memory of Major Mahama by claiming that the army officer was providing protection for a galamsey site rather than providing protection against galamsey encroachers.

“We would like to urge the media to be very circumspect in their reportage and also exercise high professionalism in the course of their duty”, the statement said.

By Mary Asante