Bugging Amewu's office: Inusah has no credible defence - Baako
The Tamale Central Member of Parliament, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini’s actions in the bugging of Lands and Natural Resources Minister Mr John Peter Amewu’s office can best be termed an “act of gross indiscretion”, veteran journalist Abdul-Malik Kweku Baako has said.
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According to Mr Baako, the decision by Mr Fuseini, to plant a spying gadget in his office while Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, his failure to remove it upon his transfer to the Roads and Transport Ministry, and omitting to inform successive Lands and Natural Resources Ministers about the existence of the device in the office present a “difficulty” in putting up a “credible defence” for him.
Mr Baako’s comments followed the recent detection of the recording device during a routine security check at the office of the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, John Peter Amewu.
The device, a recorder which can pick low volume sounds about 30 metres away with a data storage unit and a transmitting unit, was pinned to the back of the Coat of Arms hanging in the minister’s office.
Mr Fuseini has admitted to installing the device during his time as Minister to monitor movements in his office, saying the gadget was a gift from a friend. He has apologised to his two successors, Nii Osah Mills and Mr Amewu for not warning them about it even though he insists the gadget was never functional because it was not fully installed.
Speaking on the matter on the Newsfile news analysis programme on Saturday, Mr Baako described Mr Inusah as an “honest” man he has enormous respect for, for which reason he would believe he was up to no evil, but his handling of the matter was not the best.
“I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of his motives but I am not prepared to purge him of irresponsibility…it’s a certain act of gross indiscretion,” he said on the show.
Mr Baako questioned the nature and extent of Mr Inusah’s fears of “personal insecurity” which “warranted him installing this device in a public office that he occupied without reference to National Security”.
The editor-in-chief of the New Crusading Guide was also surprised that despite all the trouble Mr Fuseini went to obtain the extra security device, he in the end failed to install it.
“So the insecurity vanished into thin air? That’s where there’s a difficulty,” he noted, adding that even bizarre was the fact that he forgot to remove it or inform his successors of its presence in the office. “It’s the litany of these omissions, put together the aggregation is such that it’s difficult then to offer him any credible defence.
“Sentimentally I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but strictly speaking, from the public point of view, from intelligence point of view, from security point of view
I’m disabled to offer him any serious defence.”
However, he said the call by Sam Okudzeto, a former President of the Ghana Bar Association, for the prosecution of Mr Fuseini was “a bit too harsh, a bit too extreme”.
