The senior partner at Africa Legal Asociates and leading strategist of the New Patriotic Party, Gabby Otchere-Darko, has sued Sabah Zita Benson, a former minister for tourism and ambassador of Ghana to the Czech Republic in the Atta-Mills /Mahama government, for defamation, in connection with comments she made on her Facebook wall on the Agyapa Royalties saga.
According to the statement of claim filed by the lawyer acting for Otchere-Darko, dated Saturday 29 August 2020, Benson (the defendant) posted on Facebook an audiovisual recording of herself, under the headline “Family and Friends Agyapa Royalties”, in which she published, among other things, the following words defamatory of Otchere-Darko (the plaintiff):
Zita’s defamatory claims
“Who are the people behind Agyapa? Our own senior minister, Osafo Maafo’s son is behind it. Gabby Otchere Darko [the plaintiff] is in it as lawyer he claims he doesn’t know about it. He claimed he did not know about it and he was even going to go to court but today he himself confirmed that he is privileged to be the lawyer of Agyapa. One percent legal fees, of what will go to Gabby’s [meaning the plaintiff’s] law firm is not small money.
“It is this same group of people [meaning thereby including the plaintif] that sold Electricity Company of Ghana to themselves under PDS and they did not pay a penny and that is why the PDS agreement had to be abrogated. Because the equity that had to go into that contract never went and PDS was struggling because somebody had written a letter that they had paid their share when in actual fact it was just a letter that they had written – no money had actually gone. And for months or years they were taking money from ECG. So far nobody has been held responsible. It is the same thing that we are seeing with Agyapa.
“Once again we see family and friends at play. The same group of people – the same Osafo Maafo, Gabby [the plaintiff], Ken Ofori Atta. They are going to mortgage Ghana and you and I will be paying and even the money that we were getting under our royalties that was benefiting all of us will be going to a group of peoples’ pockets [sic; meaning thereby including the plaintiff]. They [meaning thereby including the plaintiff] have built a war chest for themselves to ensure that their generation and generation and generation’s children will never ever see poverty again.
“Can you imagine if this had happened under NDC under John Mahama, what all of you would be saying by now? But because, you know, it is your people so you are quiet. So the whole of Ghana should suffer and a group of people [meaning thereby including the plaintiff] should benefit and then when you go and talk they will tell you that oooh but he is qualified. But who is not qualified? Who is not qualified? Don’t we have qualified Ghanaians? Are they the only, is that family, that family – the Akyem family, are they the only qualified in Ghana? Are they? Don’t you have qualified people in your own families that can also be put on those companies?” said Benson in the audiovisual recording.
The plaintiff’s argument
It is the contention of Gabby Otchere-Darko that Zita Benson’s words and complaints are “absolutely false, products of the defendant’s imagination, and were mischievously designed by the defendant to disparage him, stain his reputation and his legal practice, create disaffection for him, and to bring him into abhorrence in the eyes of right-thinking members of the republic and the global community”.
“In consequence, Gabby Otchere-Darko’s [the plaintiff’s] reputation, particularly as a lawyer, has been egregiously damaged and he has suffered debilitating distress and embarrassment. Further, he has been inundated with numerous calls from business associates, social relations, friends and outright strangers, and he has had to answer very mortifying questions,” the statement of claim says.
Reliefs sought
To this end, Otchere-Darko is praying the court to award him general damages for libel contained in the defendant’s publication.
He is also seeking aggravated and exemplary damages arising from libel published by the defendant, as well as costs, including lawyers’ fees.
The action was filed on Wednesday 2 September 2020 by Kissi Agyebeng of Cromwell Gray LLP.
Wilberforce Asare / Asaase Radio
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