‘Mother serpent of corruption’ tag very serious – Tsatsu Tsikata

Martin Amidu describing his appointing authority, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, as “mother serpent of corruption” is a very serious allegation, Tsatsu Tsikata has said.

He said how the appointment of Martin Amidu ended up tells a lot about the commitment shown in the fight against corruption under the Akufo-Addo-led government.

The legal practitioner told TV 3 in an interview monitored by GhanaWeb that, “once upon a time, we heard the setting up of the Office of the Special Prosecutor was a demonstration of this administration to fight corruption and we saw a Special Prosecutor being appointed who was seen as a citizen vigilante, who would address the issues, now how did that Special Prosecutor end up, he ended up actually referring to his appointing authority, the President, as the mother serpent of corruption; that’s a rarely serious allegation.”

He added, “when an Auditor-General, who is supposed to be an independent public servant with a major responsibility for addressing issues of corruption in the public service; when he gets hunted down in the way that the past Auditor-General was hunted down from office and unable to perform his role, sent on leave and so on…, the signal that all of that sent including to people who are supporters of this government, is not such a good signal.”

Tsatsu Tsikata noted people who were advocating for President Akufo-Addo are now worried about the way he handles these issues.

“You see we have to recognize that the citizenry, as a whole, lives very close to all these events and activities, in the sense that people live next door to ministers, aides to the president, to the political appointees and they observe them, how they splash money and how they behave when they are in public,” he stressed.

Prior to his resignation as the Special Prosecutor, Martin Amidu in his resignation letter to President Akufo-Addo said, he used to be a disciple of President Akufo-Addo but after working in his administration as the lead figure in the anti-corruption battle, he has come to the realization that the president is not as committed to the course as he perceived.

He furthered that he was shocked that Nana Akufo-Addo whom he trusted as the ‘Moses of anti-corruption,’ turned out to be ‘the mother serpent of corruption.

“When I met the President on 23 October 2020, I received the shock of my life when he demanded that I took no further action on the Agyapa royalties transaction anti-corruption assessment report for another week. That was when it was divinely revealed to me that the President whom I trusted so much for integrity only looked like the innocent flower of anti-corruption but he was really the mother corruption serpent under the innocent-looking flower,” he added.

The ex-Special Prosecutor literally identified President Akufo-Addo and his Finance Minister as the brains behind the Agyapa deal which he discovered to be the greatest corruption plot in the history of the country.

“I can now say as a citizen of Ghana on the basis of the Agyapa Royalties Limited Transaction reports that the transaction was suspiciously conceived by the Minister of Finance and the Presidency and implemented to serve only a few persons within the NPP,” Amidu said.