Kufuor pardons Tsikata

Ghana’s out-going President J. A. Kufuor has pardoned imprisoned former Ghana National Petroleum boss, Tsatsu Tsikata.

In a statement signed by Deputy Information Minister Frank Agyekum and released in Accra Tuesday January 6, 2009, a day before President Kufuor hands over power to president-elect J. E. A. Mills, the President said Tsikata is pardoned unconditionally.

Following the statement prison officers keeping guard over Tsikata at the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital in Accra where he has been on admission, have been withdrawn.

Tsikata was sentenced to a five-year jail term for ‘wilfully causing financial loss to the state’ on June 18, 2008 after a trial that went on for about five years.

The statement said you have been granted, “free, absolute and unconditional pardon”.

The statement mentioned seven other convicts who were also granted unconditional pardon. They are Mr Akenteng Appiah-Menkah, an Industrialist and Mallam Yussif Ali Issah, Former Minister of Youth and Sports in the first term of the President Kufuor Administration.

Others are Mr Kwame Peprah, Minister of Finance during the First National Democratic Congress Government until 2001; Mr Ibrahim Adam, Minister of Food and Agriculture under the NDC until 2001 and Dr George Sepah-Yankey, a Director of Agriculture under the NDC until 2001, all of whom served various sentences for wilfully causing financial loss to the state in the Aveyime Rice Project

Mr Dan Abodakpi, Member of Parliament for Keta and Former Minister of Trade and Industry in the NDC Government, who also served a jail term for causing financial loss was also pardoned.

The statement further mentioned that 500 prisoners of various categories have also been pardoned.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi