A leading member of the ruling National Democratic Congress, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah says his detractors in the party will be better off turning to God and seek his well-being or they will come to shame.

He had also opened the press conference he called to address what he said were unfounded name-calling publications and comments against his person over articles he wrote of the party and happenings therein with another Bible verse.

Dr Spio-Garbrah closed the press conference at the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Hall with Psalm 35:26, quoting among others "...Let them be clothed with shame and humiliation. Those who are assuming great airs against me."

Dr Spio-Garbrah said his critics in the party cannot expel him from the NDC as they have in times past done to others.

“Goozie Tanoh left the NDC, Obed Asamoah left, Kwesi Botwe has been sidelined and now they are saying Spio-Garbrah can go, they cannot hijack the NDC and decide who leaves or stays,” he said.

Responding to the scathing attacks on him following an article he wrote in the Daily Graphic critiquing the government, Dr Spio-Garbrah said, those who disagree with his views – "especially those with a tertiary education – are free to write their own articles in order to prove" him "wrong or to refute my points."

“That is the essence of intellectual discourse, and that is how other nations have developed faster than Ghana – by challenging their leaders to continually improve upon their thinking, planning and action,” he added.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, a couple of months ago wrote an article on the commemoration of the centenary celebrations of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president.

In that article, titled Honouring Nkrumah’s Legacy: A challenge for the NDC, Dr Spio-Garbrah touched on issues he thought were not going well with the government, ranging from slow pace of the government to the calibre of appointees.

But his critique attracted the wrath of party guru, Ato Ahwoi who wrote a strongly worded open letter to Spio accusing him of attempting to intimidate the president into appointing him as a cabinet minister.

“I am telling Spio-Gabrah that he is not the only intelligent man in the world, Spio-Garbrah is not the only intelligent man in the NDC,” Mr Ahwoi later told Joy FM’s Super Morning Show host Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah.

As the controversy raged, Communications Director at the Presidency, Koku Anyidoho stoked the fires, describing the former Communications Minister in the Rawlings regime as “a man walking around like a peacock with a cheap doctorate degree.”

He later clarified that the statement was not meant to be an insult. “It was an idiomatic expression,” he said.

That was however not enough to douse the fires and it took the intervention of party chairman, Dr Kwabena Adjei’s call for a ceasefire for the parties to hold back their fire.

Flanked by hundreds of party supporters, Dr Spio-Grabrah told journalists the attacks on him were ill-conceived and misdirected because “any objective reader of my article will agree that my article was not directed at any particular individual.”

"In any case Mr Ato Ahwoi", he said, “chose to use his response and subsequent radio interviews not to address the issues raised in my article or to disprove anything I wrote as false, but rather to cast aspersions on my character, to call me various names and also to speculate about the motives I may have had for writing the article.”

He denied being peeved because was he not given any appointment in the government, stating “I have never once asked (the president) for any cabinet appointment.”

Mr Ahwoi in his letter accused Dr Spio-Garbrah of being egoistic and not a team player.

Responding to this, Dr. Spio-Garbrah said “this particular charge rings very hollow as no evidence was adduced by my detractors to substantiate this.”

He said he had worked with many organizations both locally and internally and that “there are nationals from more than 70 countries at the African Development Bank. I do not think I could have achieved what I have attained, even at the CTO in London, if I had any difficulty working with people, either as a subordinate, a colleague, a manager or as a leader.”

The former Ghana Ambassador to the United States lamented that “the problem is that some people assume that when they work with you, and even though they are not your bosses, you must remain in a supine and subservient position in your dealings with them. So, if you insist on your basic human equality and your God-given and constitutional right to freely express your opinion, then you are described as vain, arrogant, conceited or ambitious. That is a problem in many offices in Ghana, which is hindering the progress of this country, and we must root out this claptrap.”

Dr Spio-Garbrah took time to address issues raised by his colleagues which he said amounted to denigrating him.

Read Dr Spio-Garbrah's press statement here.


Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana