Daniel Bugri Naabu has said he does not need GHC500,000 and cars from President John Mahama.
“What is GHC500,000? What is a car? Me, when I started buying cars, expensive cars, John Mahama was a student. He was a student at Ghana College,” the opposition New Patriotic Party’s Northern regional chairman said when he received some regional and constituency executives of the All People’s Congress at his residence in Tamale Wednesday evening.
At a press conference by NPP flag bearer Nana Akufo-Addo’s spokesperson Mustapha Hamid on Tuesday, the party alleged that Mr Mahama and his brother, Ibrahim, in October this year, attempted buying Mr Naabu so he would resign from the NPP and launch an acerbic tribal campaign against Mr Akufo-Addo by painting him as a “hater of northerners”.
“He [Bugri Naabu] was supposed to resign from the NPP, damage Akufo-Addo as an anti-northern person, a rabid hater of northerners, and, in turn, they were going to give him: a brand new V6 Mitsubishi vehicle, a brand new V8 Land Cruiser [and] GHS3.3m.
“Bugri Naabu is owed by government to the tune of GHS247,000 from road contracts that he has done which government has not been paying for several years. They promised to pay that money instantly and then on the spot, they brought him GHS 500,000 cash in GHS50 notes. Ibrahim Mahama dropped it right in front of him [Bugri Naabu].
“It’s terribly sad. This country is in serious trouble, we need to rescue this country from serious trouble. The presidency has been so depraved, so muddied, so dirtied that I tell you in all sincerity as a Ghanaian that I feel terribly sad as a Ghanaian,” Mr Hamid said.
He continued: “And then they gave the money to Bugri Naabu and he took the money and left, it was a Friday, 28th of October 2016, so the very next day was a Saturday and Bugri Naabu found the one Prudential Bank that he knew would be opened at that time; that Abossey Okai branch of Prudential Bank and then he went and deposited the money in his account. His account number is 0090985590013, account name is Daniel Bugri Naabu. And out of that money, immediately Ibrahim Mahama told Bugri Naabu to take GHS50,000 out of it and give it to Alhaji Awal – the go-between; the man who facilitated the meeting and that they will replace the GHS50,000 later. A few days later at Bugri Naabu’s daughter’s funeral in Tamale, true to word, President Mahama sent a high-powered delegation to Bugri Naabu’s daughter’s funeral, led by Deputy Chief of Staff Kenneth Wujangi. There was Dr Mustapha Ahmed in that delegation, there was Ibrahim Mahama himself in that delegation and then the president went and gave Bugri Naabu an additional GHS 10,000. In other words, a donation of GHS 10,000 was made on behalf of the president and Ibrahim Mahama himself gave GHS 20,000 as funeral donation.”
He said days later “… they delivered the brand new Mitsubishi V6 – it is actually parked in this yard now – when we finish, journalists can go and have a look at it. Now these are the original documents of the Mitsubishi V6. This is Bugri Naabu’s picture that they have put on it. 2 November 2016 was when the change of ownership was done but this vehicle was imported in August of 2016 and it originally was imported and is owned by a company called Malin Investment Company Limited. So we ourselves did a check with the Registrar General to find out who are the owners of Malin Investment Company Limited and the two directors of Malin Investment are one Hawa Hayifi Ayi Mahama and Frank Nuhu Alormator (Frank Alor). And Frank Alor everybody knows is the personal assistant to President Mahama. … Hawa Mahama, I leave you to go and find out [who she is] … but I’m sure you can infer that she is a sister of the President but you can find that out. But what we are sure of [which] everybody knows is, Frank Alor, who is a personal assistant to President Mahama. I’m sure all of you journalists know him. So they jointly own Malin Investment which is the company that originally imported the vehicle which they have given to Daniel Bugri Naabu to bribe him to destroy Akufo-Addo and make sure that northerners hate him and that he doesn’t get a vote in the north. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot run a country like that. You recall that just a few days ago they brought Harruna Attah who they’ve given an ambassadorial position in Namibia to lie through his teeth that Akufo-Addo had told him that no northerner can ever lead our party. Now this revelation should tell you that it is just a carefully orchestrated scheme. When I refuted it, I’m sure a lot of you were saying: ‘Um, is it really true that Akufo-Addo didn’t say that?’ But now it is very clear that there’s an ethnic, ethnocentric, tribal agenda that is meant to incite hatred against a good man who has been fighting all his life for the Ghanaian project, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Allah shall fight for Akufo-Addo.”
Following the allegation, General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said only fools will believe that President Mahama and his brother attempted bribing Mr Naabu.
Answering questions about whether the allegation did not risk denting the fortunes of the NDC in the 7 December polls, Mr Asiedu Nketia, popularly known as General Mosquito, wondered why the NDC would want to buy somebody like Mr Naabu, who, he said, cannot even speak for himself in a matter pertaining to himself.
He told Prince Minkah on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Wednesday, 30 November: “Unless you take all Ghanaians to be fools, but Ghanaians are not fools, so the type of questions I’m asking, every Ghanaian will ask those questions and will be able to draw a conclusion that this is desperation at its highest peak.
“…If I have GHS10 to pay or to bribe anybody to speak for me, it is not Bugri Naabu that I’ll be wasting that money on. NPP itself knows. And this issue where he cannot even speak for himself shows that he cannot even be speaking for anybody. A person who cannot even speak for himself, will not be able to speak for another person. I think that if you are a person who people would want to buy, then you must demonstrate that you can even speak on matters concerning you. Since Bugri Naabu was made regional chairman of NPP, ask the NPP people themselves, what impact has he made? What has been his impact? I mean do you think that somebody becomes so rich that he doesn’t know what to use his money for then he goes throwing the money away buying people who cannot speak to speak for him?”
In his estimation, the whole bribery story was cooked up by the NPP to save, what in his view, is the failing campaign of the NPP and its flag bearer Nana Akufo-Addo.
“I am saying that this whole story is something that is not worthy of the airtime you are spending on it. If Bugri Naabu claims somebody has bribed him, he can speak or his spokesperson can speak, but I know Mustapha Hamid is the spokesperson for Nana Addo and then Nana Addo’s campaign manager, so they have come together and realised that the campaign is going so bad for Nana Addo so: ‘let us throw in any mud hoping that that mud will stick’, but Ghanaians are wiser than what they take them to be.
“Everybody thinks that: ‘Oh, we have lost so it doesn’t matter, let’s throw anything inside. That is what they are doing. I’m not sure this is going to sway any sensible Ghanaians into voting for Nana Addo.”
Mr Naabu, however, said: “He [Mahama] himself told me that I was having some cars, Motorolas (sic) and others the day he was presenting the GHS 500,000 to me and the car. So what is he talking about? What are they talking about? …I don’t need bribe. If I need bribe, I would have pocketed the money they gave me and the cars and the promise of the other money, which [was] supposed to come. “… If John Mahama wanted to give me money, he would have given me since he became the vice and president. … Is it today that he [President Mahama] knows that I need money. Is it today? I asked him that day: You [Mahama] said I’ve run away, I said you led me because … all of you including your brothers, we were together, why do you get power [and] to talk to you is a problem? Today that you’re failing, you’re asking me to come? I won’t come.”
