Is Paul Adom-Otchere a journalist or hatchet man?

Characteristically, you did an editorial on your show, Good Evening Ghana Official to defend and decry the removal of irredeemably corrupt Nyantakyi. I want to tell you, Nyantakyi wasn't removed because Black Stars wasn't doing well. It's myopic to think so or attempt to create that impression.

Your wobbly attempt to link his removal to the performance of national teams is yet another demonstration of your cerebral weakness on matters of Ghana.

Hear this in case your ears are stuffed: irredeemably corrupt Nyantakyi was removed because he was corrupt! He was removed because he built a football dynasty for himself and his cabal instead of building a football association. He was removed because he said he could create a fake deposit taking institution for receiving football sponsorship monies and then keep about 50% of that amount to himself.

He was removed because he influence-peddled and almost nearly said - he had the president in his pocket. As FIFA found, he broke FIFA's code of ethics substantially!

In case you have wool in your eyes, let me briefly help you to remove it. Colts football collapsed completely under your friend, Nyantakyi. Football was administered by people who themselves owned clubs and manipulated the system to favour their teams, an example is Wa All Stars.

You can ask football historians to give you a vivid account of the stewardship of Nyantakyi which was partially scribbled in the Justice Dzamefe Commission report.

That report appears to have been the prima facie evidence for the #12 exposé. Get a copy of that report and read it since you always like to exhort other journalists to read. If you had read that report, you wouldn't have embarrassed yourself with that sham defence.

Also, for you, football is all about Black Stars? How does the abysmal performance of the Black Stars in Cameroon exculpate irredeemably corrupt Nyantakyi from the crimes for which the Attorney General is prosecuting him? Should irredeemably corrupt Nyantakyi be exculpated only because Kurt Okraku is messing up?

Is that what you were taught at law school regarding exoneration? Irredeemably corrupt Nyantakyi changed all rules to make him invincible.

No term limits in his administration, and that's why he made his infamous statement that "he'll give the GFA the next president when he's ready to step down". This is the impudence you're heartily defending.

If for nothing at all, the current football manual or rules make room for changing a particular administration if they fail to perform. So there'll be elections sometime to come for Kurt Okraku and his lieutenants where they'll be held accountable for their stewardship.

There's now a term limit that makes it impossible for underperforming and corrupt officials to stay in power perpetually - a spectre of the Nyantakyi dynasty. That's a silver lining in the removal of irredeemably corrupt Nyantakyi which you have wilfully failed to see.

Then again, if the removal of your friend Nyantakyi has led to a collapse of Ghana football, is that not symptomatic of a system that was built around one person ostensibly to make him irreplaceable? Why should a person be irreplaceable in public service?

Paul, I think you're a coward. I say so because, when #12 was premiered and the stakes were high, you couldn't let your stance known but now that the heat is down and water has gone under the bridge, here you are exhibiting chicken bravado in the form of an editorial bereft of knowledge. If you truly believe in this opinion, you should have said it at the heat of the moment. This is cowardice at its apogee.

What kind of journalist are you? You only feed on secondary news in the public domain without any ingenuity. Tell us what your many years of so-called "intellectual" journalism have produced. I challenge you to mention one thing or policy your self-aggrandising journalism has shaped or reformed.

Read full article