IGP leaked tape: Biased Atta Akyea should be asked by speaker to recuse himself – Dr Bonaa

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Security and Safety analyst, Dr Adam Bonaa has asked for the recusal of the Samuel Atta-Akyea, the chairperson of a 7-member ad-hoc committee tasked with investigating the recently leaked controversial audio.

In an interview with GhanaWeb following allegations made by George Akuffo-Dampare, the legal representative of Ghana’s Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. Bonaa noted that Mr. Atta-Akyea has strayed from the committee’s mandate.

“Yes, it would have been proper for Speaker to ask him to recuse himself because like I said, if you go and play the video you can see the chairman almost turning the thing into a per trawling exercise on the sea and when you come on the land it’s like galamsey, using crude methods to do what you have not been asked to do when you’ve been given a term of reference. So it will be proper if the Speaker asks him to recuse himself but I believe the speaker knows what he is doing,” he stated.

Lawyer Kwame Gyan in a recent interview expressed concerns over Mr. Atta-Akyea’s conduct, alleging that the committee chairman was making prejudicial comments that could compromise the integrity of the investigation.

Mr. Atta-Akyea, who also serves as the Member of Parliament for Abuakwa South, has come under intense scrutiny for his handling of the case.

Mr Gyan accused Mr. Atta-Akyea of operating as if he were the sole commissioner overseeing the investigation. He expressed his team’s reluctance to accept such a situation going forward.

“He has his own agenda,” Mr. Gyan asserted, hinting that Mr. Atta-Akyea has revealed his biased intentions for all to see.

Reacting to the allegations against the committee chairman, Dr Bonaa said the observation by Dr Dampare’s lawyer can be confirmed from a careful analysis of the proceedings and the conduct of the chairman.

“For those who watched the on-camera sittings, when one of the senior police officers said he was a member of the NPP and he was asked whether he was a card-bearing member of a political party, just when he was about to answer, the chairman actually restrained him and told him not to answer. The video is there.

“So I believe that the Speaker of Parliament should actually collect all these videos to do an assessment of the performance of his chairman. He stopped him from answering and thought that was being biased. You are there to collect facts so if a question is put to a witness and the witness decides to answer, you don’t tell him not to answer because you don’t act as a counsel for the witness but by and large that was what he was doing,” Dr Bonaa noted.

It will be recalled that 3 serving police officers and a former regional chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) were recorded on tape plotting the removal of the IGP.

The tape which has been widely publicised by the media saw the senior officers courting the support of the politician to cause the replacement of the IGP ahead of the 2024 general election.

The officers, who described themselves as hardcore members of the NPP, expressed concern that the presence of Dr. Dampare as IGP would be detrimental to the party’s chances of retaining power.

By: www.ghanaweb.com