Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has said he unlike under the Mahama administration where he felt safe as a journalist, his life has continuously been in danger under the Akufo-Addo administration.
“I felt very safe under former President Mahama and I have a number of colleagues who have also told me they don’t feel safe now so that should be the priority of this administration going forward”, Azure told Samson Lardy Anynini on Accra-based Joy FM’s Newsfile programme on Saturday, 31 October 2020, during a discussion on his documentary ‘Contracts for Sale’, which, eventually caused the President to sack the CEO of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), Mr Adjenim Boateng Adjei.
According to Mr Azure, “For corruption, even if you are a politician, a civil society person or even the President; if you intend to seriously fight corruption, his own life will be threatened to some extent.
Adducing evidence to buttress his comment that he felt safer as a journalist under the John Mahama administration, Mr Azure said: “When AhmedHussein-Suale was killed and he [President Akufo-Addo] went to the Ghana Bar Association conference in Takoradi, he made a statement to the effect that people shouldn’t take it as an attack on journalists.
“But we know that AhmedHussein-Suale was threatened, put on live television by Kennedy Agyapong, who is a leading member of his party, and he asked people to attack him [AhmedHussein-Suale] not because of anything but because of the work he has done.
“So, if an MP is killed and then we give all MPs security and then a journalist is killed, why say we shouldn’t take it as an attack on journalists?”
“I asked: ‘Who is the old man?’ And he said: ‘The President’. And I said: ‘The President is not a party to this case, so, why should apologoising to the President result in the withdrawal of the case?’”
“I was ready to go the full length but he said he is an NPP lawyer and that I shouldn’t doubt him,” he concluded.
