Nana Agyei Baffuor Awuah, one of the lawyers for Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the Member of Parliament for Manhyia South has confirmed a report that his client had agreed to an out-of-court settlement on his defamation suit against the National Democratic Congress’ Sammy Gyamfi.
The lawyer, speaking on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana programme on October 13, 2022, also announced that he had orders to go all out and enforce a GHC500,000 judgment that his client secured on the same day.
After sharing perspectives with show host Paul Adom-Otchere on how the three-year-old case travelled, a text message read by the host disclosed that an out-of-court settlement had been successfully pursued at a point.
“In the course of the trial, Sammy Gyamfi actually went to NAPO for an out-of-court settlement. NAPO asked him to pay GHC40,000 to Osu Children’s Home and also render an apology. Sammy Gyamfi said he will not do that so the case went on,” Adom-Otchere read before moving on to issue a disclaimer.
The lawyer quickly retorted, “oh, it is true.”
The case involved a 2019 press conference addressed by Sammy Gyamfi, in which he alleged that persons complicit in the infamous kidnapping of the Canadian school girls were linked to the Energy Minister.
The Minister, according to his lawyer, went to court purposefully to clear his name seeing that he had been defamed in the face of rightful thinking members of society, hence the GHC500,000 judgment and apology handed down by the trial judge.
Gyamfi, meanwhile, has stated that the High Court erred in its ruling and that he will appeal the outcome in the coming days.
